Thursday, November 21, 2013

Tosspot Words


Tosspot Words

Though William Shakespeare often gets credit for coining the word tosspot, its first recorded use was in 1568, when Shakespeare was a mere four years old. The word means a lush, a drunkard or fool & hearkens back to the day when folk drank their ale or mead from pots. It seems a tosspot tossed back his or her pot, and was known for doing so a little too often.

A short time ago I ran into a second, more delicious usage of tosspot in the comments section of Anu Garg’s amazing AWAD (A Word A Day) listserv, in which Gregory M. Harris mentions the phenomenon of the tosspot word. Other than a referral back to his AWAD comment at Librarian’s Muse, I can find no other reference to this second meaning. Is the distinction real or imagined?

The proposed term tosspot word refers to the phenomenon of a compound word built of a verb, then a noun, in that order. Some examples include:

breakfast
campsite
driveway
flyway
killjoy
playhouse
rattletrap
repairman
scarecrow
sharecropper
skateboard
telltale
turncoat
waitstaff
washcloth
watchdog
watchtower

Big thanks to Gregory M. Harris who made the AWAD comment that got me interested in this phenomenon & inspired some happy pondering.

Should we embrace the existence of the tosspot word? Please use the comments section to vote yay or nay, or to lengthen the list, or to argue for why a word on the list doesn’t belong there, or...



My thanks go out to this week’s sources: the OED, Librarian’s Muse, Etymonline. & A Word A Day

10 comments:

  1. Why not? Many of these words make perfect sense: by eating, one breaks one's fast. A scarecrow is set up to scare crows!

    Watchtower...well, it isn't the *tower* we're watching, and the tower certainly isn't doing the watching! Waitstaff I could argue with, but let's not quibble here.

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  2. I adore tosspot words. Maybe it's my German ancestry. They love to combine strings of words into one huge mouthful. I've always liked the word tosspot, too, but I had no idea that's what it meant. I imagined somebody who tossed the contents of his chamberpot in ill-advised directions. This is slightly more hygienic.

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  3. Hi Anne & Rachel6,
    Thanks once more for dropping by. Anne, I love the idea that a tosspot might have something to do with that wonderful invention, "gardyloo," but I suppose you are correct about hygiene. Rachel, "quibble" is another fine word that deserves some attention!

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  4. The description tosspot word should be reserved for expressions constructed by combining a verb and a noun to indicate a person’s character.

    Apart from tosspot, other such words include killjoy, lickspittle, makebate, pinchgut, sawbones, scofflaw, smellfungus, telltale and turncoat.

    You dilute the term’s special meaning if you apply it to everyday words such as breakfast, campsite, driveway, flyway, playhouse, rattletrap, repairman, scarecrow, sharecropper, skateboard, waitstaff, washcloth, watchdog and watchtower.

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  5. I see the value in limiting the definition to just descriptions of character, but wonder if that would limit the list of tosspot words to just a handful. What's the longest list we could come up with...would it exceed even 20?

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    1. An interesting argument. It all hinges on one's chosen dictionary, I suppose.

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  6. I enjoyed reading this thread. Some thoughts:

    A *charming* Pittsburghese variant on your already-cited 'washcloth' is 'washrag'.

    Shakespeare also gives us 'tearsheet' used variously for a woman of *negotiable* affection or one comfortable in bed with company.

    Carry on!

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  7. Hi! I am that Gregory M. Harris who learned of tosspot words from the late Laurence Urdang's Verbatim: The Language Quarterly many years ago. I'm too tired to research anything said in this comment, so feel free to disagree. My points are:

    (1) I don't think the term is limited to descriptions of character. It relates to function: "Scarecrow" ("it scares crows");

    (2) The definition "a compound word built of a verb, then a noun, in that order" is too broad, and lets in non-tosspots like the following:

    campsite ("he/she/it camps sites"? "Sitecamper"?)

    driveway ("he/she/it drives way"? "Waydriver"?)

    flyway ("he/she/it flies way"? "Wayflier"?)

    playhouse ("he/she/it plays house"? "Houseplayer"? Could be one of an unmarried couple living together)

    rattletrap (an arguable case argued below)

    repairman (NG unless referring to God or a surgeon: "he/she/it repairs man"? "Man repairer"?)

    sharecropper ("she shares crops"? "Cropsharer"?The "-er" ending is generally but not always a "not a tosspot" telltale. A tosspot version might be "cropshare," meaning he/she/it crops [harvests] a share [allotment of land], but that's not the meaning of the elements of "sharecropper," boo-hoo).

    skateboard (would be a tosspot if it referred to one who skates boards, but it refers to the board itself, so NG)

    waitstaff ("he/she/it waits staff"? "Staffwaiter"?)

    washcloth ("he/she/it washes cloth"? "Clothwasher"? ) It would be a tosspot if it meant "clothwasher," but it doesn't, so it isn't; ditto "washrag")

    watchdog ("he/she/it watches dogs"? "Dogwatcher"? it would be a tosspot if it meant dogwatcher, but it doesn't, so it isn't)

    watchtower ("he/she/it watches tower"? "Tower watcher"? It would be a tosspot if it meant "tower watcher, but it doesn't, so it isn't)

    (3) I would define a "tosspot word" (short name: tosspot, second meaning) as "a word describing the actor upon an object, but formed in the way opposite to the usual English way of "object + action + '-er', as breakfast, scarecrow, and tosspot, and not fastbreaker, crowscarer, and pot-tosser."

    (4) If "rattletrap" meant "a person or thing that rattles his/her/its traps [trappings]," it would be a tosspot. I'm speculating that it did mean that, but its use as a noun dimmed out, but the word lived on as an attributive adjective;

    (5) I also enjoy finding "false tosspots" like "jackboot," pretending it means "bootjacker." Others: wastewater, blackheart, clotheshorse;

    (5) I find it fun to make up new (often but not always nonsensical) tosspots, usually by reversing the word order of non-tosspots: makeshoe, makematch, breakhorse, stickpot, shoottrouble, masterquarter, flowpassion, showthunder, mongercoster, babblepshyco, breakstrike (="scab"), breakground, snuffcandle, catchoyster, rigthimble, bockknicker (he/she/it bocks [bock = vomit, retch, belch, burp, var. of "boke"] knickers), chasesteeple, throwflame, painthouse, cleanhouse, and so on;

    (6) Tosspots tend to be conciser, because they haven't the repetitive "-er" tag;

    (7) Tosspots have an eerie Anglo-Saxon feel to them, as if belonging to an ancient mindset;

    (8) Tosspots, like "tosspot" itself, make for pungent insults. Imagine MF as FM.

    (9) What a joy to revisit this topic after so many years! Larry Urdang, RlP.

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    Replies
    1. More tosspots: dingthrift, turnkey, nipcheese, scattergood, daredevil, killjoy, dreadnought, pickpocket, cut-throat.

      Obsolete "fear-babe" (something that frightens children, where "fear" carries a meaning now only dialectical, of "frighten, terrify"), "kill-devil" (bad rum), and "sell-soul" (one who sells his soul).

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    2. You are a champion among commenters. Thanks so much for putting so much thought into this. I hope life's being good to you.

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