Obs. A word app. deduced by Bailey from tid-bit, but also in independent dialect use. From Bailey in Johnson, whence in later dicts.: also in nonce-use from tid-bit: see quots.
1727. Bailey, vol. II., Tid, nice, delicate, as a Tid-Bit.
1755. Johnson, Tid, adj. (tydder, Saxon), tender; soft; nice … Titbi′t (properly tidbit; tid, tender, and bit), nice bit; nice food. [See note below.]
1730. Panegyric on Swift, 13. While Dunces of the coarsest Clay … Devour the Church’s tiddest Bits, That only should be shar’d by Wits.
1799. E. Du Bois, Piece Family Biog., I. 70. She is too tid a bit for us lubbers aboard the world.
[Note. The OE. word meant by J. is tídre, tyddre ‘weak, fragile, easily broken; frail in health, infirm’; it could not give tid ‘tender, soft, nice.’ The latter does not appear as general Eng. before Bailey. But the Eng. Dial. Dict. has from Midl. counties Tid, tidd = ‘fond, attached, careful (of), solicitous (about); (of a child) tender, nice, fanciful; (of a man) cunningly reserved.’ J. D. Robertson’s Gloucester Glossary (1890), has Tid, ‘playful, frolicsome,’ and cites from John Smyth’s Berkeley MSS. c. 1640 (ed. 1885, III. 25) ‘Tyd, i.e. wanton. Hee is very tyd, i. e. very wanton. A tyd bit, i. e. a speciall morsell reserved to eat at last.’ These evidence the limited dial. use of an adj. tid, tidd, or tyd; though the senses given do not very closely agree with that deduced by Bailey from tid-bit.]
