-ittus

Meaning

1. morphemesuffixdiminutive suffix, used to create nouns

Origins

Uncertain. Perhaps doublet (with the littera rule) of -ītus, from Proto-Italic *-tos. More information It COULD just be an alteration of -illus, -ellus, or simply -lus, but this hypothesis would not work out well, and neither l → t nor ll → tt are documented for PIE to Latin in the Index Diachronica (plus, the ID doesn't even have sound changes from Latin to Latin, so that wouldn't work anyway). It could just be an irregular sound change, however, or it could just be inspired by it in shape or form. This change is, also, not documented in the section "Classical Latin vs. Vulgar Latin," respectively for older Romance languages such as Old French and Old Spanish.