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Iota and Jot
Feel free to jot this down so you don’t forget: the words iota and jot share a lot more than just a common meaning—both ultimately come from the same word. When Latin scholars transcribed the Greek name of the ninth letter of the Greek alphabet, they spelled it as either iota or jota (the letters i and j were simply variants of each other), and these spellings eventually passed into English as iota and jot. Since the Greek letter iota is the smallest letter of its alphabet, both words eventually came to be used in reference to very small things.
Examples of iota in a Sentence
Jon Wilner, Mercury News, 28 June 2025
Two weeks can be too tight of a turnaround time for any horse one iota shy of tip-top shape.
—Sam Cohn, Baltimore Sun, 15 May 2025
The Senators entered the series as underdogs and with one iota of the pressure on their backs compared with the Maple Leafs and the playoff demons that live in their heads and beds.
—Julian McKenzie, New York Times, 30 Apr. 2025
Does anyone on this program have one iota of a survival instinct in their doomed bodies?
—Jessica M. Goldstein, Vulture, 25 Apr. 2025
See All Example Sentences for iota
Cite this Entry
“Iota.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary, Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/iota. Accessed 8 Jul. 2025.
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