Titivillitium

Part of speech: noun

Definitions

1. A very small, insignificant quantity or minor detail, often one that is easy to overlook
2. Something so slight and negligible that it barely registers as worth mentioning or counting
3. A trifling bit of something, a fragment of little importance in comparison with the whole

Etymology: Medieval scribes had a demon to blame for their mistakes. Titivillus, as monastic lore describes him, was a small devil who gathered up the syllables, idle words and skipped lines left behind by careless copyists and carried them off to hell, where they were counted against the scribes' souls. He was a convenient scapegoat for anyone who had dropped a letter or dozed over a psalter. The word "titivillitium" is a playful pseudo-Latin formation built on that name. The ending "-itium" gives it the look of a technical term for a substance or cause, as though the errors were a measurable material. It is a nonce word, coined for a joke rather than adopted as a standard term, and its humour depends on the reader recognising the demon behind it.