[Often identified with CHIT sb.3, but found more than two centuries earlier, and at a time when the latter (if it existed at all) existed as chīthe. Seeing how this constantly renders catulus, we may compare it with kitten, kitling. Cf. also the Cheshire dial. chit, Sc. cheet ‘puss’ and chitty, cheety a cat. With sense 2 cf. kid, cub, whelp applied contemptuously to a child: as, however, sense 1 is obsolete, it is probable that people now often associate sense 2 with CHIT3, as if = ‘sprout,’ ‘young slip’; cf. ‘chit of a girl’ with ‘slip of a girl.’]
† 1. The young of a beast; whelp, cub; kitten.
1382. Wyclif, Isa. xxxiv. 15. There hadde diches the yrchoun, and nurshede out litle chittes [1388 whelpis].
c. 1450. Metr. Voc., in Wr.-Wülcker, 624. Murelegus, catus, catulus, [glossed] catte, idem est, chytte.
1519. Horman, Vulg., 109. The lyon with his roryng awaketh his chittes.
1591. Percyvall, Sp. Dict., Gatillo, a chit, Catulus.
1713. C’tess Winchilsea, Misc. Poems, 129.
| Whilst that demure, and seeming harmless Puss | |
| Herself, and mewing Chits regales with Us. |
2. Applied, more or less contemptuously, to a child, esp. a very young child (cf. kid); a brat.
c. 1624. Middleton, Game Chess, I. i. Priapus … Bacchus’ and Venus’ chit, is not more vicious.
1665. Boyle, Occas. Refl. (1675), 340. But this lickerish Chit, I see, defeats her plot.
1682. Dryden, Satyr to Muse, 4. Scolding Wife and Starving Chits.
1781. Cowper, Expost., 474. While yet thou wast a grovelling, puling chit.
1864. H. Jones, Holiday Papers, 312. When I was a naughty little chit in a pinafore.
b. A person considered as no better than a child. ‘Generally used of young persons in contempt’ (J.); now, mostly of a girl or young woman.
1649. G. Daniel, Trinarch., Rich. II., cccxliv. Silly Chitts they knew not what Hee mean’t.
1694. Pol. Ballads (1860), II. 42. When a Nation submits To be govern’d by Chits.
1766. Goldsm., Vic. W., xi. As for the chits about town, there is no bearing them about one.
1812. Crabbe, Flirtat., Wks. 1834, V. 267. A girl, a chit, a child!
1839. Dickens, Nich. Nick., xii. A little chit of a miller’s daughter of eighteen.
1840. Thackeray, Paris Sk. Bk. (1872), 108. To be in love with a young chit of fourteen.
1879. Mrs. Macquoid, Berksh. Lady, 193. He either marries a kitchen-wench, or some chit twenty years his junior.
3. attrib. (Cf. CHITTY a.2, CHITTY-FACE.)
1816. Scott, Old Mort., x. He was so silly as to like her good-for-little chit face.
