Tommy--prophetes.ai

Tommy¹
  (ˈtɒmɪ)
  In senses 2–5 usu. tommy.
  [dim. or pet form of Tom n.¹: cf. baby, dolly, Bobby, Teddy, etc.]
  1. a. Familiar form of Thomas.
  b. A simpleton; also, short for tommy-noddy (= Tom-noddy 1). dial.

1829 Bowles Days Departed 44 The tandem-driving Tommy of a town. 1833 P. J. Selby Illustr. Brit. Ornithol. II. 439 Puffin..Tommy-nodie, Tommey. 1847–78 Halliwell, Tommy..a simple fellow. 1899 Leeds Mercury, Suppl. 6 May (E.D.D.), He's as big a Tommy as iver I knew.

c. Short for Tommy Atkins: see 7.

1884 Kipling in L. L. Cornell Kipling in India (1966) iii. 83 (title) The story of Tommy. 1893 ― Many Invent. 28, I was..with sixty Tommies—private soldiers, that is. 1898 Westm. Gaz. 26 Jan. 7/1 An occasional detachment of Tommies with the attendant coolies and sweepers. 1901 Daily Graphic 23 Feb. 7/4 A vigorous protest is being made on behalf of the dignity of the British line against the use of the too familiar sobriquet ‘Tommy’. 1907 Blackw. Mag. Nov. 651/2 A group of Tommies in uniform.

2. a. A soldiers' name for the brown bread formerly supplied as rations (also brown tommy); with a and pl., a loaf of bread (dial.); among workmen, Food, provisions generally, esp. those carried with them to work each day. soft tommy, white tommy: see quot. 1796. See also tammie.
App. personified as Tommy Brown, altered to brown Tommy and tommy. Similarly a hunk of grey bread distributed at Minto House, as part of a Hogmanay gift to the village children, used to be called Tam Gray.

1783 [see quot. 1830]. 1796 Grose Dict. Vulg. T. s.v., Soft Tommy, or white Tommy; bread is so called by sailors, to distinguish it from biscuit. 1803 in Spirit Pub. Jrnls. VII. 352 A high sea,..without a bit of soft Tommy to put into your lantern jaws. 1811 Lex. Balatr. s.v., Brown Tommy; ammunition bread for soldiers; or brown bread given to convicts at the hulks. 1825 Brockett N.C. Words, Tommy, a little loaf. ‘A soldier's tommy’. 1830 in W. Cobbett Rur. Rides (1885) II. 353 When I was a recruit at Chatham barracks, in the year 1783, we had brown bread served out to us twice in the week. And, for what reason God knows, we used to call it tommy... Any one that could get white bread called it ‘bread’, but the brown stuff..was called ‘tommy’. 1846 Camp & Barrack-Room ii. 16 After I had breakfasted upon tommy and insipid coffee. 1865 Slang Dict., Tommy, bread,—generally a penny roll. Sometimes applied by workmen to the supply of food which they carry..as their daily allowance. 1911 H. F. Rutter Let. to Editor, Used in provincial dialects and invariably by English navvies as a synonym for food. ‘I was that bad I couldn't eat my tommy’. ‘Go into the stable and give that old horse his tommy’.

b. Goods; esp. provisions supplied to workmen under the truck system; also, short for tommy-shop, and for the truck system.

1830 [implied in tommy-shop, systemin 6]. 1845 Disraeli Sybil iii. i, Diggs' tommy is only open once a-week. Ibid. iii. iii, What are you doing here, little dear?; very young to fetch tommy. 1856 Househ. Words 21 June 545/1 The navvy knows that he is a helpless being if he cannot get his tommy; and this word..signifies beef, bacon, cheese, coffee, bread, butter, and tobacco. 1860 Slang Dict., Tommy, a truck, barter, the exchange of labour for goods, not money.

3. As the name of something small of its kind. a. See quot. a 1825. b. = tommy bar, sense 6 below.

a 1825 Forby Voc. E. Anglia, Tommy, a small spade to excavate the narrow bottoms of under-drains [1895 Gloss. E. Anglia adds ‘Also a small wrench used by engineers’]. 1843 J. J. Greer Brit. Patent 9811 (1856) 2 My invention..consists..first, in working a double screw..from a central axis into two separate boxes or cases, either by a lever commonly called a tommy, or by a spanner. 1844 Civil Eng. & Arch. Jrnl. VII. 35/1 On giving motion to the screw, which is effected by means of a tommy, or spanner. 1881 Hasluck Lathe Work 179 Hooked tommys are employed to actuate all those capstan headed screws and nuts which from insufficiency in the depth of the holes do not afford a hold for the ordinary straight forward tommy.

c. The smallest of the gazelles, Thomson's gazelle, of East Africa. [Here orig. from Thomson.]

1906 Westm. Gaz. 2 June 2/2 It is a pretty sight to see a herd of the graceful little Thomson's gazelle (locally called Tommies) mingling with a flock of sheep and goats. 1912 Comtemp. Rev., Lit. Suppl. Jan. 137 Mr. Barnes came across the gigantic eland..Grant's gazelle, Tommy, oryx [etc.].

4. A gold-washing trough; = Tom n.¹ 4 a.

1892 Pall Mall G. 10 Aug. 2/1 At the end of the tiny creek, where a ‘tommy’ was..set in motion to wash the alluvial soil and extract the tiny glittering particles of gold.

5. (Usually soft tommy.) Pewter solder (pewter 6) used by jewellers.

1877 G. E. Gee Practical Gold-worker 137 ‘Soft solder’..commonly called in the jewellery trade ‘soft tommy’. 1912 Let. from Jeweller to Editor, Tommy or soft tommy means the ordinary lead or pewter solder that is in common use for repairing Britannia metal or lead articles.

6. attrib. and Comb.; chiefly in senses 2, 2 b, as tommy-box, tommy-master, tommy system; tommy-bag, a bag in which a workman or school-boy carries his day's food; tommy bar Mech., a short bar that can be inserted into a hole in a box-spanner or screw to assist in turning it; tommy-book, an account book of goods supplied on the truck system; tommy-cod = tom-cod a; Tommy('s) cooker Mil. slang, a small portable spirit stove; also, a piece of rolled-up canvas soaked in grease used in place of this; tommy-day, a day on which a tommy-shop is open; Tommy Dod(d, the ‘odd man’ in odd-man-out (odd D. 2); tommy-hole, one of two or more holes in a nut, into which steel pins can be inserted to turn it; tommy-long-legs, the daddy-long-legs; tommy-noddy, -norie = Tom-noddy; tommy-plough = tom-plough (Tom n.¹ 7 a); tommy-ˈrot, nonsense, bosh, twaddle; hence tommyˈrotic a. [after erotic], nonsensical; ˈtommy-shop, a store (esp. one run by the employer) at which vouchers given to employees instead of money wages may be exchanged for goods; a truck-shop; also attrib.; Tommy talker colloq. = kazoo; Tommy-touchwood, the game of ‘touch wood’.

1873 Slang Dict. s.v. Tommy, *Tommy-Bag is the term for the bag or handkerchief in which the [workman's tommy or] ‘daily bread’ is carried. 1983 P. Nash Coup de Grass ii. 23 He was wearing overalls and carrying a canvas tommy-bag.

1920 Webster, *Tommy bar. 1930 Engineering 25 Apr. 538/1 The cylinder is removed bodily from its supporting bracket, by unscrewing a hinged fixing pillar by means of a tommy bar. 1953 E. Hyams Vineyards in England 226 Pass a tommy-bar through the hole at the top of the screw and spin the screw to bring the piston down on to the grapes. 1973 D. Lees Rape of Quiet Town vii. 121 He fixed each jack separately..then gave the tommy bars a few..twists until they were tight.

1845 Disraeli Sybil iii. i, You know as how Juggins applied for his balance after his *tommy-book was paid up.

1906 Westm. Gaz. 2 July 5/2 The rescuers ultimately found the two men alive in the old workings... Without food, their ‘*tommy’ boxes having been washed away by the flood, they subsisted on a few candles.

1879 J. Burroughs Locusts & W. Honey, Halcyon (1884) 310 From Rivière du Loup, where we passed the night and ate our first ‘*Tommy-cods’.

1917 W. Owen Let. 4 Feb. (1963) 430 We had 5 *Tommy's cookers between the Platoon, but they did not suffice to melt the ice in the water-cans. 1919 N.Y. Times 23 Feb. iv. 12/2 When 4 o'clock came around every manjack of us would take out his Tommy-cooker and begin making his tea. 1948 A. Baron From City, from Plough xviii. 165 On the little tommy-cookers that they sheltered between their feet they brewed..tea in their mess-tins.

1845 Disraeli Sybil iii. iii, It's grand *tommy-day you know.

1870 A. Steinmetz Gaming-Table II. 221 Not long ago a returned tradesman..allowed himself to be induced to play at *Tommy Dodd with two low sharpers. 1873 Slang Dict., Tommy-Dodd, in tossing when the odd man either wins or loses, as per agreement. 1884 Punch 16 Feb. 73/2 A gambling game known as ‘Tommy Dod’ is extensively practised.

1897 Pemberton Compl. Cyclist 125 The head nut, which could be made with a milled edge, and with *tommy holes to start it if stuck beyond finger power.

1863 Atkinson Stanton Grange (1864) 84 Large flies, may-flies, *tommy-longlegs, and grasshoppers.

1860 Slang Dict., *Tommy-master, one who pays his workmen in goods, or gives them tickets upon tradesmen, with whom he shares the profit.

1849 W. & H. Raynbird Agric. Suffolk 301 The tom or *tommy plough is a plough with a double breast for ridging, or for clearing out furrows.

1884 Moore Mummer's Wife (1887) 25 Bill..said it was all ‘*Tommy rot’. 1899 M. Kingsley W. African Stud. ii. 41 My fellow new⁓comers..thought nothing of calling some of our instructor's best information ‘Tommy Rot’!

1895 Chicago Advance 4 July 4/1 A whole school of what has been humorously called erotic and *tommyrotic realists..asserting that progress in art requires the elimination of moral ideas.

1830 in W. Cobbett Rur. Rides (1885) II. 354 A *tommy shop: a..place containing every commodity that the workman can want, liquor and house-room excepted. 1833 Wade Hist. Mid. & Working Classes (1835) 113 An effort was made by 1 & 2 Wm. IV. c. 37 to put an end to what are termed tommy shops, and the practice so general..of paying wages in goods, in lieu of coin and banknotes. 1845 Disraeli Sybil iii. i. note, The Butty generally keeps a Tommy or Truck shop, and pays the wages of his labourers in goods. 1882 Standard 26 Dec. 2/3 The ‘foggers’, or ‘Tommy shop’ men, live lives of contentment,..at the expense of the poor nail-workers.

1830 in W. Cobbett Rur. Rides (1885) II. 352 In the iron country..the truck or *tommy system generally prevails.

1938 *Tommy Talker [see kazoo]. 1976 S. Barstow Right True End i. iii. 38 Learn the piano... Well, the french horn, clarinet, fiddle, trombone; mouth-organ, jew's harp, tommy-talker.

1876 M. E. Braddon J. Haggard's Dau. ix, The children playing *Tommy Touchwood under the chestnuts.

7. Tommy Atkins. Familiar form of Thomas Atkins, as a name for the typical private soldier in the British army: for origin, see Thomas 3; hence transf. a private in any army; also, one of the rank and file in any organization.

1883 Sala in Illustr. Lond. News 7 July 3/3 Private Tommy Atkins, returning from Indian service. 1887 St. Andrews Citizen (Dixon), In the privacy of his house Tommy Atkins may..hold his baby in his arms. 1892 Kipling Barrack-room Ballads, Tommy, God bless you, Tommy Atkins, We're all the world to you. 1893 F. Adams New Egypt 101 The Egyptian Tommy Atkins inspires one rapidly with feelings of sheer affection. 1898 E. J. Hardy in United Service Mag. Mar. 646 Some years ago, Lord Wolseley..said, ‘I won't call him Tommy Atkins myself, for I think it is a piece of impertinence to call the private soldier Tommy Atkins'. Ibid. 649 From talks with these men, I have learned to know and respect Tommy Atkins.

Hence ˈtommy v., trans. to subject to the tommy system; to enforce the truck system on; ˈtommyhood, the condition or state of a Tommy.

1845 Disraeli Sybil iii. i, The fact is we are tommied to death. 1857 J. Miller Alcohol (1858) 66 note, The razor is kept from Tommy in his Tommyhood.