tee, tea or T

I'd have to say Fits to A Tee

hope this helps...

TO A T - "We use this expression very commonly in the sense of minute exactness, perfection; as, the coat fits to a T; the meat was done to a T. It is easy to dismiss the origin of the expression as, I am sorry to say, some of our leading dictionaries do, by attributing it to the draftsman's T-square, which is supposed to be an exact instrument, but the evidence indicates that the expression was in common English use before the T-square got its name. 'To a T' dates back to the seventeenth century in literary use and was undoubtedly common in everyday speech long before any writer dared to or thought to use it in print. But it is likely that the name of the instrument, 'T-square,' would have been in print shortly after its invention, yet the first mention is in the eighteenth century. The sense of the expression corresponds, however, with the older one, 'to a tittle,' which appeared almost a century earlier, and meant 'to a dot,' as in 'jot or tittle.' Beaumont used it in 1607, and it is probably that colloquial use long preceded his employment of the phrase..." From "2107 Curious Word Origins, Sayings & Expressions from White Elephants to a Song and Dance" by Charles Earle Funk (Galahad Books, New York, 1993).

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To say to a T means that something is exactly or precisely so. An example appeared in a film review in the Fresno Bee on 30 September 2005: “As Oliver, Barney Clark fits the description to a T: He’s small, angelic and suitably cowed by all the world has to throw at him.” And Jerome K Jerome had some fun with it in Three Men in a Boat in 1889: “Harris said, however, that the river would suit him to a ‘T’. I don’t know what a ‘T’ is (except a sixpenny one, which includes bread-and-butter and cake ad lib., and is cheap at the price, if you haven’t had any dinner). It seems to suit everybody, however, which is greatly to its credit.”

You can see from Jerome’s usage that the expression is quite old. In fact, it was first written down almost exactly two centuries before. That rules out the possibility that it’s connected with T-shirt, which has been suggested as the origin, but which isn’t recorded before about 1920. Finding out where it came from turns out to be rather difficult — there are several candidates, but nobody knows for sure. The obvious suggestion is that it comes from a tee in golf (or just possibly curling). Another is that it refers to a T square (a term that appears at about the same date), or to the correct completion of the letter t by crossing it. No evidence exists that links any of these to the expression.

The origin that most experts point to, rather cautiously, involves T being the first letter of a word. If this is the case, then tittle is easily the most likely source, since to a tittle was in use in exactly the same sense for nearly a century before to a T appeared (it’s first recorded in a play by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher of 1607 with the title Woman Hater: “I’ll quote him to a tittle”).

http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-toa2.htm

Darnit. I was hoping this would turn into a discussion about tea.

But I did learn something about T.

Today's grammar lesson was brought to you by the letter T.