Witch's tit

In politically-correct parlance, an "auxiliary" or third nipple.

Auxiliary (third) nipples are often small and appear to be moles that swell when touched and do not change colour in the sun.

Anne Boleyn had one, as do roughly 1/3 of all humans. They're kind of like inflamed appendixes or wisdom teeth: some of us have, some of us don't.

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Colder than a witch's tit is an old English gripe about inclement weather.

If third nipples are the hallmark of being a witch, you might want to know that accessory nipples are most often found in "milk lines" running from mid clavicle down to the groins on both sides. Why does this happen? Ask an embryologist.

a sign that a woman was a witch. it was standard practice during the witch hunts in europe and the americas to strip the accused during an arrest and interrogation, and search her body for any suspicious-looking marks. moles, warts, birthmarks and scars were often mistaken for witch's tits; sadly, these alone were often all the 'evidence' needed to condemn the accused.

once a suspicious mark was found, it was pricked with a bodkin (witch pricker). if the mole bled, the accused was human. if it did not hurt, the woman was a witch. and yes, some witch finders used retractable bodkins so that they could collect more "bounty." it's a wonderful world.

why were extra nipples a sign of being a witch? it wasn't just because of the obvious freakishness factor. in those days witches were thought to be handmaidens of the devil. the devil in turn would send them animals, called familiars, to protect and serve them. most familiars would suck on extranummary teats present on the witch's body, presumably for nourishment.

A slightly more modern expression of displeasure at local meterology is, "Colder than a witch's tit in a brass bra." This seems to be a combination of "Colder than a witch's tit", and "Cold enough to freeze the balls off of a brass monkey."

The closest thing to an origin I can find on this particular quotation is Thomas Pynchon's Gravity Rainbow.

From the book Bloom by Wil McCarthy.

In Bloom a Witch's Tit is a device thrown into a bloom of Mycora to slow or stop it's growth.

Mycora are nanomachines that use ambient energy (usually heat) and any and all materials around to self-replicate. Mycora are not under human control, so the only way to stop a grey goo scenario is to deprive the Mycora outbreaks (or blooms, for the flower-fractal shapes they make) of energy.

The Witch‘s Tit somehow - it is never explained - drastically reduces the amount of heat in an area, and is used in the fashion of a grenade. My theory is that the Tit uses highly sensitive and efficient thermocouples to convert heat into some form of energy that the Mycora cannot use, like radio waves or ultraviolet radiation. Like all anti-Mycora weapons, the Witch's Tit is never 100% successful. It would only work effectively where it could do more damage to the Mycora than the good it would do by feeding the Mycora with its substance.

The name comes, presumably, from the attributed coldness of the bosoms of magical practitioners.

It has been surmised that the witch's tit found by some inquisitioners has actually been the clitoris.
It is a theory based on historical research indicating that the interrogations sometimes:

• occurred behind closed doors
• were conducted on suspicious* women
  (i.e., overly passionate, loose, or branded as harlots), and
• conducted by men.

This, combined with folklore detailing that a witch's tit was a hidden "teat from which the devil himself would suckle" and drive the witch into a frenzy, leads to the conclusion that Interrogators would most likely test any witch's tit they found for such a response.

* It is believed that some "witches" were merely women living outside the Puritan societies of the early Americas, who familiarized themselves with herblore and knowledge about the human body. Most of them spent their days as midwives applying the knowledge to their trade. Being outside the Puritan moral society, it was likely that the interrogators found them convenient scapegoats and targets for sexual harassment.