Definition of "tonsils"

“So now everything's fine.” I uttered a hacking laugh. “No,” I said, in answer to a query from Aunt Dahlia. “I have not accidentally swallowed my tonsils, I was merely laughing hackingly. Ironical that the young blister should say that everything is fine, for at this very moment disaster stares us in the eyeball.”

1960, P[elham] G[renville] Wodehouse, chapter XX, in Jeeves in the Offing, London: Herbert Jenkins