Definition of "tosh"

The sewer-hunters were formerly, and indeed are still, called by the name of "Toshers," the articles which they pick up in the course of their wanderings along shore being known among themselves by the general term "tosh," a word more particularly applied by them to anything made of copper.]

, volume II (The London Street-folk. Book the Second.), London: [Griffin, Bohn, and Company], page 150, column 2

I am present engaged in fishing for tosh in the sewers of Blastburn.

1974, Joan Aiken, Midnight is a Place, page 164

To think what I've gone through to hear that man! Frightful tosh it'll be, too.

1892 October 26, Oxford University Magazine, number 26/1

Perhaps it helped a man into Parliament, Parliament still being a confused retrogressive corner in the world where lawyers and suchlike sheltered themselves from the onslaughts of common-sense behind a fog of Latin and Greek and twaddle and tosh.

1911, H[erbert] G[eorge] Wells, chapter 5, in The New Machiavelli, London: John Lane; The Bodley Head […]

‘Took yeh from the ruined house myself, on Dumbledore’s orders. Brought yeh ter this lot...’ ‘Load of old tosh,’ said Uncle Vernon.

1997 June 26, J. K. Rowling [pseudonym; Joanne Rowling], chapter 4, in Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Harry Potter; 1), London: Bloomsbury Publishing

A ‘tosh’ pan... is also provided.

1881, Leathes in C.E. Pascoe, Everyday Life in our Public Schools, ii. 20

We call a tub a tosh.

1905, H. A. Vachell, Hill, section I

Among the recent neologisms of the cricket field is ‘tosh’, which means bowling of contemptible easiness.

1898 June 25, Tit-Bits, 252/3

'Ere, tosh, you bin at Cha'ham?

1954, E. Hyams, Stories & Cream, section 175

You tend to the toshing, let Mester Hobday tend to the dealing.

1974, J. Aiken, Midnight is Place, vi. 180

‘Toshing’ was the name given to a punishment inflicted by the cadets on any one of their number who made himself obnoxious. The victim, dressed in full uniform, was forced to run the gauntlet of his brother cadets, who, as he passed, emptied the contents of their ‘tosh-cans’ (small baths holding about three gallons of water) over the wretched lad's head.

1883, J.P. Groves, From Cadet to Captain, iii. 227

He toshed his house beak by mistake, and got three hundred.

1903, J. S. Farmer et al., Slang, VII. 171/1

Tosh, tight, neat.

1776, D. Herd, Ancient & Modern Scottish Songs

I gang ay fou clean and fou toshAs a' the neighbours can tell.

1794, J. Ritson, Scottish Songs, I. 99

We were a very tosh and agreeable company.

1821, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 10 4

Shouther your arms!—O! had them tosh on, And not athraw!

1808, J. Mayne, Siller Gun, i. 20

Hoo she wad try to tosh up... her breest.

1826 November, J. Wilson, Noctes Ambrosianae, xxix, in Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 788

tush or tosh. Money: Cockney: late C.19–20. Ex: tusheroon... But H. errs, I believe: he should mean half-a-crown, for tusheroon and its C.20 variant tossaroon (2s. 6d.) are manifest corruptions of Lingua Franca MADZA CAROON.

1961, Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang

Here's a tosh to buy yourself some beer.

1961, J. Maclaren-Ross, Doomsday Book, i. v. 63

Half-a-crown is known as an alderman, half a bull, half a tusheroon, and a madza caroon; whilst a crown piece, or five shillings, may be called either a bull, or a caroon, or a cartwheel, or a coachwheel, or a thick-un, or a tusheroon.

1859, J.C. Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words

‘Tush’, for money, would be an abbreviation of ‘tusheroon’, which in old cant, and also in tinker dialect, signified a crown.

1912, J.W. Horsley, I Remember, xii. 253