Comments on: Every little (bit?) helps

By: Ginny Moon

Ginny Moon — Tue, 10 May 2011 15:15:02 +0000

I found this site looking for the origin of a phrase much used by my Nana (also born 1910, in Throckey, near Newcstle upon Tyne, UK) who was fond of saying "every little helps as Nelly Rain said when she pissed in the sea". I was wondering if anyone else had heard of Nelly Rain?

By: ibob

ibob — Sun, 23 Aug 2009 18:00:51 +0000

Just stumbled on this old page. It appears that 'little' in these phrases means essentially the same as German 'bisschen' (or 'bißchen' in old spelling). Now the interesting thing is that 'bisschen' is derived as a diminuitive from the stem 'beißen' or 'Biss' which is of course the English 'bite' — from which 'bit' is derived. The German 'bisschen' can appear in essentially the same phrases as english the English modifier 'little':
'a little faster' - 'ein bisschen schneller'
'a little (of this)' - 'ein bisschen (davon)'
'every little helps' - 'jedes bisschen hilft'
but
'a little dog' - 'ein kleiner Hund'
'a little bit (of this)' - 'ein kleines bisschen (davon)' or: 'ein klein wenig (davon)'

Notice that the grammatical structure is also reflected by the translation the adjective little translates as 'klein', the modifier as 'bisschen'. Just something curious that came to my mind.

By: Skullturf Q. Beavispants

Skullturf Q. Beavispants — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 20:22:02 +0000

"The Big Easy"

By: Daniel von Brighoff

Daniel von Brighoff — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 18:39:59 +0000

Y'all can do your worst, but ultimately it's all to the good.

So what to do with NPs where the "adjectives" are themselves modified? A college friend and I came up with "That licks the big sticky" as an innocuous but vaguely obscene-sounding alternative to "That bites the big one". And Buffy TVS nearly succeeded in making "the Big Bad" a normal part of American English.

By: Skullturf Q. Beavispants

Skullturf Q. Beavispants — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 17:37:22 +0000

I've heard "doing the nasty" as a euphemism for the sexual act.

By: ajay

ajay — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 16:27:26 +0000

From my extensive reading of silly P.G.Wodehouse novels, it appears that there IS some process where an adjective that occurs in a cliche can get noun-like treatment in a playful way. I'm pretty sure that, for example, "ready cash" gets used as "a bit of the old ready" (memory here, not lookup).

"Doing the dirty" on someone is to betray them. Also, to have "gone to the bad" - to have turned to the disreputable side of life. And to scatter something "to the wide" means to scatter it over a large area. I'm sure more examples will occur to me…

By: Nicholas Waller

Nicholas Waller — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:50:26 +0000

@ Daniel Demski So on the Internet every little bit is 3 times as popular?

If you do the Google string thing using only google.co.uk rather than the whole web you get these figures

91,000 "every little helps"
52,800 "every little helps" -tesco
19,000 "every little bit helps"
17,700 "every little bit helps" -tesco

So without Tesco "every little" is 3x more common than "every little bit" in the UK.

By: Freddy

Freddy — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 11:21:32 +0000

I think in German, this would be perfectly grammatical. A hint?

By: Nelly

Nelly — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 10:26:24 +0000

As my grandmother (born 1910) used to say: "'Every little helps,"' said the woman who pissed in the sea." I think it's been around for quite a while.

By: Dougal Stanton

Dougal Stanton — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 09:10:47 +0000

Terry Leahy, current Tesco CEO, is credited some places with introducing that slogan, though I can't find definitive information.

CNN did an interview with Terry Leahy, and introduce their interview with "Every little bit helps — this is a Tesco mantra". Was this a deliberate mangling of the slogan to make it readable to a larger American audience, or was it accidental, like Geoff Pullum's original reading of the receipt?

By: tree_and_leaf

tree_and_leaf — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 07:53:48 +0000

What's more, if you look at all usages of 'a little', rather than just the phrase 'every little', which is the OED's sense 4a, then we get citations going back to the thirteenth century, so it's only a recent development for people who thing it's been downhill all the way since the Norman Conquest.

4. a. A small quantity, piece, portion; a small thing; a trifle.
c1220 Bestiary 110 Naked falle in e funt-fat, and cume ut al newe, buten a litel. c1380 WYCLIF Sel. Wks. III. 347 Cristis apostlis..were not bisie about dymes, but helden hem paied on a litil, at the puple af hem redily. c1400 Destr. Troy 1449 Lo, how fortune..of a litill hath likyng a low for to kyndull. 1614 DAY Festivals ix. (1615) 267 Contemne not these littles, be they in truth never so little. 1631 FOSBROKE Solomons Charitie (1633) 7 Many littles, given unto many,..is better then much conferred upon one. 1692 R. L'ESTRANGE Fables cccclxviii. 443 A Man may be Happy with a Little, and Miserable in Abundance. 1846 D. JERROLD St. Giles xxiii. (1851) 236 When a man's being shaved, what a little will make him laugh. 1865 DICKENS Mut. Fr. II. xiv, A debt to pay off by littles.
Prov. 1622 MABBE tr. Aleman's Guzman d'Alf. I. 50 Many a little, makes a mickle. 1791 J. O'KEEFFE Wild Oats V. iii. 64 It is'n't much, but every little helps. 1840 MARRYAT Poor Jack xiii. 90 It's a very old saying, that every little helps. 1872 S. HALE Lett. (1918) 84, I get fearfully tired, and a very little Abbey goes a long way with me. 1873 ‘MARK TWAIN’ in ‘Mark Twain’ & Warner Gilded Age xxiv. 226 Every little helps, you know.

As far as the isogloss goes - as has been already pointed out, the last citation is solidly and impeccably American. The usage may, of course, have died out in the States since…

By: mollymooly

mollymooly — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:31:51 +0000

Proverbs don't have to be grammatical. Some proverbs are not (well) known in America. There are no generalisations to be drawn or lessons to be learnt. Everybody move along, now.

By: language hat

language hat — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 20:03:15 +0000

This 1806 edition of Wild Oats has "Here–it's not much; but every little helps."

By: Stephen Jones

Stephen Jones — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:40:22 +0000

It does seem to be a British phrase. There is no entry in the COCA for 'every little + v' whilst the same string on the BNC turns out eight examples for every little helps (only one referring to Tesco). The COCA has 79 hits for 'every little bit' whilst the BNC has twelve. Seven of the BNC hits are for 'every little bit helps' whilst the COCA has 33 hits for that.

By: Simon Cauchi

Simon Cauchi — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 19:17:13 +0000

Curious that the OED has

1791 J. O'KEEFFE Wild Oats V. iii. 64 It is'n't much, but every little helps.

but the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs cites the same passage as

1791 J. O'KEEFFE Wild Oats V. iii. Here–it's not much! but every little helps.

Anyone willing to seek out the source and check which is the correct version?