Itsy-bitsy?

Reader question:

Please explain “itsy-bitsy”, as in “itsy-bitsy bikini”.

My comments:

An itsy-bitsy bikini is a very small set of swimsuit for a woman.

Emphasis on very small.

A bikini is a skimpy two-piece swimsuit that is only big enough to cover the vital body parts of a woman.

Vital body parts, that is, euphemistically speaking.

The long and short – especially short – of it is that the bikini is so small that it leaves most of the wearer’s body exposed.

Which is the purpose, of course, but that is neither here nor there. Here, we’re only concerned with the adjective “itsy-bitsy”, which, as I said, means small, extremely small and, in the case of bikinis, charmingly small.

According to the dictionary, “itsy” is derived from itty, which is baby talk for little. Bitsy, obviously, comes from bits, as in bits and pieces.

Apparently, itsy-bitsy is an apt modifier to describe a skimpy bikini because, as a matter of fact, Vocabulary.com cites “itsy bitsy” in its very definition of bikini:

A bikini is a two-piece women’s bathing suit. Bikinis are usually skimpy, and a particularly small one inspired a song from 1960 called “Itsy Bitsy Teeny Weeny Yellow Polka Dot Bikini”.

All right, I think we’re all clear and, no further ado, let’s read a few media examples of its-bitsy:

1. Texas has 4 national forests within it. The biggest one covers over 163,000 acres but is nowhere near the biggest forest in the United States of America.

Sam Houston Forest covers 163,037 acres and spreads over 3 counties, Montgomery, Walker, and San Jacinto. There are also quite a few private land holdings within Sam Houston forest.

There are a total of 4 national forests in Texas – Angelina, (153,179 acres), Davy Crockett, (160,000 acres), Sabine, (160.656 acres) and Sam Houston, (163,037 acres). Those, believe it or not, are itsy-bitsy compared to the biggest forests in the country.

The acreage for the top 10 biggest forests in America is measured in millions.

The smallest of the top 10 is just a couple of hours drive from El Paso. Surrounding the Silver City, New Mexico area, the Gila National Forest covers 2.7 million acres.

Of all the top 10 biggest forests, the next closest one to El Paso is the Tonto National Forest near Chandler. It comes in at just under 3 million acres, 2.9 to be exact, in size.

For the biggest of the big dog forests, Alaska is the place to go. (Wait, isn’t pretty much the entire state of Alaska considered a forest?) The Tongass National Forest comes in at 17 million acres.

- Biggest Forest In Texas Is Tiny Compared To Others In America, KISSElPaso.com, January 16, 2013.

2. Has Donald Trump conceded the presidency by design? Is his choice of furniture betraying a subconscious admission of defeat? When the outgoing US president gave a speech this week saying he would depart if the electoral college voted for Joe Biden, his words came as less of a shock than the desk he chose to sit at. It was tiny. It sent out a clear signal. And that signal was “loser”.

Jokes about the shrunken size of Trump’s desk – one photograph, taken from low down, captures his legs barely fitting beneath it – are easy. So let’s not. You want to see a real ruler’s desk? The Resolute desk in the Oval Office is the definition of one: a massive fortress of a working space, like an aircraft carrier with legs, sporting the US eagle at the heart of its heavy Victorian carvings. Its timbers are British in origin: they come from a Royal Navy sailing ship, HMS Resolute, that once braved the icy waters of the North Pole. And in a final addition of defensive machismo, Franklin D Roosevelt had the front bulwarked so no one could see his leg braces and discover he was disabled.

Trump’s appearance behind this itsy-bitsy piece of flotsam shows why Roosevelt and other presidents have always chosen to moor themselves behind the grandiose Resolute. It bulks them out. What Trump was leaning on was not even a desk. It was merely a table. It fails all the design criteria required of a desk. It isn’t even an escritoire, which may be cosy but at least has important-looking drawers. Nor could it qualify as a secretaire. In fact, there’s no storage at all. Has he already cleared everything out?

…

It’s not bigness that a desk projects so much as busyness. And Trump has not seemed very busy lately. Playing golf, tweeting his real or feigned disbelief at the election results, he doesn’t seem that occupied with great affairs of state. This little table, pretending to be a desk, is a confession of idleness. Far from commanding urgent matters in the historic Oval Office, Trump squats at this little furnishing where he might be able to eat a light meal while watching TV. Perhaps the next stage is a fold-out tray on his lap.

It’s a retired person’s table, a desk for TV dinners. This is Trump gradually giving up the pretence he runs a vast country and instead settling into a more leisured life. Like his furniture, he is diminishing before our eyes.

- Trump's furniture fail: that’s not a desk, Donald – it’s a table for TV dinners, TheGuardian.com, November 27, 2020.

3. An American woman has revealed the huge culture shock she got after reciting a well-known nursery rhyme in Australia – and the very creepy conclusion she came to afterwards.

Texan Tara Lappan, who is married to an Australian and lives Down Under, was singing ‘itsy-bitsy’ spider to her baby, alongside her husband when it struck.

The American was using her thumb and index finger to sign-out the tiny spider crawling up the drain pipe.

But when she looked over at her husband he was using his thumb and pinky – making a much larger spider.

‘Obviously that makes so much sense as an Australian who lives with huntsman spiders,’ she laughed.

‘That’s the size of the spiders that are here,’ she said with an uncomfortable look on her face.

Her video quickly went viral and people were quick to chime in.

Many correcting her wording.

‘It is incy wincy spider here,’ many wrote.

But a minority argued it is ‘itsy bitsy’ where they come from.

Others said they never had a spider quite as big as Tara’s husband’s.
‘'We went thumb to index finger, making a diamond shape,’ one woman said.

- Americans notice massive culture shock in Australia: ‘This is so creepy’, DailyMail.co.uk, February 6, 2025.

本文仅代表作者本人观点，与本网立场无关。欢迎大家讨论学术问题，尊重他人，禁止人身攻击和发布一切违反国家现行法律法规的内容。

About the author:

Zhang Xin is Trainer at chinadaily.com.cn. He has been with China Daily since 1988, when he graduated from Beijing Foreign Studies University. Write him at: zhangxin@chinadaily.com.cn, or raise a question for potential use in a future column.

（作者：张欣）