toff
noun/tɒf/UK/tɔf/US/tɑf/
Etymology
Probably an alteration of tuft, referring to the gold tassel on the cap worn by titled undergraduates at English universities.
- derived from universities
Definitions
An elegantly dressed person.
- Last week down our alley came a toff, / Nice old geyser with a nasty cough, / Sees my missus, takes his topper off, / Quite in a gentlemanly way
A person of the upper class or with pretensions to it, who usually communicates an air of…
A person of the upper class or with pretensions to it, who usually communicates an air of superiority.
- Now Freddy is young, practically twenty years younger than Higgins: he is a gentleman (or, as Eliza would qualify him, a toff), and speaks like one; […]
- ‘Well, I got Parkes for one, and I got Atkinson for two, and got Ward of Dawson Street. Fine old chap he is, too—regular old toff, old Conservative! “But isn’t your candidate a Nationalist?” said he.[…]’
- I came home first class—up the front end with the toffs—semi-anaesthetised throughout the trip by caviar and free champagne—and to hell with frugality and the conservation of resources.
The neighborhood
- neighborla-di-da
Vish — recursive loop
No curated loop yet for toff. Loops are being traced one word at a time while the ingestion pipeline matures.
sense glosses and etymology drawn from English Wiktionary · source · CC-BY-SA