T [OE] One way of saying that something is an exact fit is to say that it fits to a T (or to a tee). Various ideas as to what the T stands for range from a golfer’s tee to a builder’s T-square, but none is totally convincing. It may have originated from the action of completing a letter T with the horizontal stroke, as in dot the i’s and cross the t’s [M19th], meaning ‘to make sure all the details are correct’. The problem with all these explanations is that this 17th-century expression is found earlier than the proposed sources. One historically possible suggestion is that it is a shortened version of the early 17th-century phrase to a tittle, which has the same meaning as to a T. A tittle was a small stroke in writing or printing, such as the crossbar of a T or the dot of an i, which fits the idea perfectly. See also jot. The T-shirt is so called because it is shaped like a T when spread out flat. The term was first recorded in 1920.