Meaning & use
bitty
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Meanings
adjectivecomparableinformalBritish
Made of many small pieces or parts that do not join up well, so the whole feels scrappy or uneven.
Grammar: Used before a noun or after a linking verb: a bitty report, or the report felt bitty.
Patterns
- a bitty something
- feel bitty
The documentary was interesting but bitty, jumping from one topic to the next without any link.
I find the second half of the album bitty; none of the tracks seem to belong together.
She gave a bitty explanation, full of half-finished thoughts.
adjectivecomparableinformalBritish
Containing tiny bits or particles of something, so that it is not smooth.
Grammar: Describes a texture or liquid: bitty orange juice, not smooth juice.
Patterns
- bitty with something
I prefer my orange juice bitty, with plenty of pulp left in.
The sauce turned out bitty because I did not blend it for long enough.
The old paint had gone bitty and would not spread evenly.
Word forms
| comparative | bittier |
|---|---|
| superlative | bittiest |
Common combinations
- a bitty narrative
- The film's bitty narrative made it hard to care about any of the characters.
- feel bitty
- After so many interruptions, the meeting started to feel bitty and pointless.
- bitty and disjointed
- His essay was bitty and disjointed, with no clear argument running through it.
- bitty texture
- The soup had a slightly bitty texture from the unblended vegetables.
- rather bitty
- The schedule looks rather bitty, with lots of short sessions and long gaps.
Synonyms and how they differ
- patchy
- Patchy stresses uneven quality or coverage, while bitty stresses that something is made of small unconnected pieces.
- disjointed
- Disjointed is more formal and says that parts do not connect logically, whereas bitty also suggests the pieces are small and scrappy.
- fragmentary
- Fragmentary is neutral and often used of evidence or records that survive only in pieces, while bitty is an informal complaint about flow.
- scrappy
- Scrappy suggests poor quality and carelessness, while bitty only points to the lack of smooth connection.
Opposites
Word family
- bit noun
- a small piece or amount of something
- bittiness noun
- the quality of being made of small unconnected pieces
- bits and pieces noun
- an informal phrase for a collection of small, varied things
Commonly confused: bitty or bitsy?
bitty vs bitsy
Bitsy (as in itsy-bitsy) just means tiny and is often affectionate, but bitty usually criticizes something for being scrappy or in pieces.
Practice
The reviewer complained that the novel felt ___, moving between short scenes with no thread to hold them together.
Choose one answer.
Bitty describes something made of small, poorly joined parts. Bitten is the past participle of bite and does not describe structure; burly and bountiful do not fit a story.
Make it your own
Write a sentence using “bitty”, then check it and compare it with the examples above.