tosh

Meanings

Noun

• Copper; items made of copper.
• Valuables retrieved from drains and sewers.
• Rubbish, trash, nonsense, bosh, balderdash
• A bath or foot pan
• Easy bowling
• Used as a form of address.
• A half-crown coin; its value
• A crown coin; its value
• Any money, particularly pre-decimalization British coinage

Verb

• To steal copper, particularly from ship hulls
• To search for valuables in sewers
• To use a tosh-pan, either to wash, to splash, or to "bath"
• To make ‘tosh’: to tidy, to trim.

Adjective

• Tight.
• Neat, clean; tidy, trim.
• Comfortable, agreeable; friendly, intimate.

Adverb

• Toshly: neatly, tidily

Origin

• From 19th-century British thieves' cant, of uncertain origin. Sense of nonsense possibly influenced by tush attested from 15th century.
• Compare Old French tonce ("shorn, clipped") and English tonsure.
• From 19th-century British slang tosheroon, from or alongside tusheroon, of uncertain derivation from British slang caroon, from Sabir and (originally) Italian corona ("crown"). The term was either derived from or influenced by madza caroon, the British slang for the Sabir and Italian mezzo corona, possibly under influence from tosh above or from the half-crown's value of two shillings & sixpence.