I have always been puzzled by this phrase. Who uses a comb on their teeth?
I just found the answer and thought I would share it with you!
I found it in a marvellous new book called The Grammar Cookbook. It's a grammer reference book basically but it's fun and interesting. If you go to the web site (trackerpress.com) and click on Sample Pages one of the pages is the explanation of the "fine tooth comb" mystery!
Robbie
Welcome, Robbie. I always assumed it meant a comb with fine teeth, ensuring the removal of all those little nits.
you'll find lots of references to nits about here--real ones (cooties!) or imaginary ones--the kind nit pickers are always looking for! you'll even find references to knitting!
there are some weird little packets of info hidden in past post.. and we are always looking for new ones, and never know were they will come from, so keep posting!
(NYC has 1 full time professional nit picker.. (she is busiest in early fall, as kids come home from summer camp with 'guests'--NYC will not allow a child with lice or nits to attend class. )
Weavers will pick nits, imperfections in the form of little balls of material, from the warps and woofs.
Hmmm. I think I might smell some spam cooking here.
... nits ... little balls of material, from the warps and woofs
I think I've always referred to that phemonemon (the little balls, not the picking them off) as "pilling," which would make the little balls pills. ofTroy? You're our resource on knitting and weaving and such.
And speaking of nit-picking, in my experience it's always been a "fine-toothed comb". Anybody want to run a quick informal geographic distribution survey? My exposure is NYC/Boston area, mostly.
...right, that's it - pilling. Thanks.
Down in southern New York State it's Fine Toothed too
"fine-toothed comb"That would be correct gramatically. Yet Faldage, Nit-Picker Supreme, suggested that the *truly correct form is "finely-toothed comb."
...Anybody want to run a quick informal geographic distribution survey...I'm sure I'd write it as 'fine-toothed' (nobody in thier *right mind would write or think of "finely toothed", ASp, but mehbe that was yer point
) yet I'd speak "fine-tooth"... and I'm all halfway across the US.
Robbie:
It is an all-too-common occurrence here to have an advertisement for a product disguised as a post. Almost invariably it is a new person's first post.
If you are indeed a new person who simply meant to bring to our attention something interesting, I apologize most humbly.
Please do not let my boorishness drive you away from this fine place, one which I cannot frequent as much as I used to when I had a job that kept me tied to a computer all day. I had to retire to start getting a life!
TEd
Welcome back, TEd!
I think Glinda is looking for you with a finely teethed comb!
I smelled spam, too, TEd.
the combination of spam and combs produces a mental image which is just nasty.
Whatever you might do in writing, the transition from a dental stop to a glottal plosive is just too difficult for cotidian speaking. The dental fricative to glottal plosive combination is much easier.
(Thanks to Dr Bill for catching my cotidial. Correction made.)
yeah, what Faldage said, I think?
I've always said fine tooth comb with a sorta implied hyphen like fine-tooth, said slurred together with a quickly following comb. The pause simillar to the glottal stop heard in Hawaiin words and indicated by the okina '
Fine-tooth'comb.