Subtitles section Play video Print subtitles Hi this is Tutor Nick P and this is Adjective Phrase 37. The adjective phrase today is tit-for-tat. Okay. Let's continue. If someone does something tit-for-tat it is usually done in revenge or in retaliation for something done to upset or harm someone or harm a particular person. So they did something to you, you do something back to them. It's a little bit like the idea of like an eye for an eye a tooth for tooth. All right. Let's continue. The origin of tit for tat is believed to derive from like an older phrase " tip for tap. " Okay. Which used to mean blow-for-blow. So I hit you. You hit me. Even though blow, today blow sounds more like a hard hit. But you know , tit for tat it would actually or tip and tap would actually be a light hit today. Okay. for that just became a variant of the word. Okay. So it's a little strange. Because the original phrase was tip for tap and that kind of went out. And the variant remained. So we still say tit for tat. But no longer tip for you know, tip for tap anymore. Okay. Let's continue. Okay. The word tip still has the meaning of a slight hit or a light hit. Yeah. So just like , like in baseball you could get a foul tip. Where the batter swings and he just barely the, the ball just barely touches the bat. So that could be referred to as a foul tip or if you're passing somebody and you just barely touch them just slightly, you could say you, you, you know , you just tipped them or something just tipped it. Okay. Let's continue. Tap is also a light hit as in you tap someone on the shoulder. Like try to get their attention. Hey, hey buddy you know, again. Hey excuse me. Try to get somebody's attention. You tap them. Okay. Tit for tat could be found in John Heywood's book of Proverbs. Of course you know he was another one that compiled or collected a lot of Proverbs too. All right. We just have two examples here. Example number one. In the trade war between those two countries there were tit-for-tat cases of implementing duties on each other's good. So if one country puts some duties on their, their country they turn around and did it back and back and forth several times. So they were doing it tit for tat. You do it to me I do it back to you. Okay and we sometimes hear this too. Sometimes if like two countries are angry at each other and they, they force their diplomats to leave. So if you force my diplomats to leave. You tit for tat they'll turn around and do the same thing back to them.They'll force that country's diplomats to leave too So we might hear it in that sort of situation as well. And the second one that we have here. Those warring drug gangs have had tit-for-tat attacks on each other's members in a war over territory. Yeah. We often use to hear about this in the past that you know these drug gangs, they think they have this certain territory but two of them might be fighting about a small piece that they think should belong to them. So they will fight back to each other, tick and tit for tat. Okay. Anyway, I hope you got it . I hope it was clear. Thank you for your time. Bye-bye.
A2 US tit tat tap phrase adjective blow English Tutor Nick P Adjective Phrase (37) Tit for Tat 15 0 anitawu12 posted on 2020/02/14 More Share Save Report Video vocabulary