Toff Tarrant

[vilakins]

Further to my post on tufthunters and the tuftiness of Tarrant, I have a little more on the term from this week's World Wide Words newsletter:

TUFTHUNTER Following my note last week about spotting a usage of this obsolete term of rebuke, several people queried the similarity in sense and form between "tuft" and "toff". I might have said that it is commonly believed that the latter term, for a rich or upper-class person, does indeed derive from "tuft".

I thought it was relevant to the discussion on one of the B7 lists about whether Tarrant was an Alpha (I think he was).

FWIW I think most of them were Alphas except for Vila (Delta), Gan (Beta or Gamma), and Cally and Soolin who were outside the system. I think Avon may have started as a Beta technician and been promoted to Alpha as he's got the practical skills--unlike Blake--and seems to care a lot more about relative status than the others. [ducks and covers] Don't shoot!

Comments

[hafren.livejournal.com]

In my personal back-fanon, Avon was born to a Delta mother after a one-night stand with an Alpha father.... I agree he isn't a born Alpha, both for the reason you mention and because people born into money aren't usually so obsessed with acquiring it, nor do they tend to think it'll be the solution to all their ills.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Oh, a good and telling point!

[jhall1.livejournal.com]

My Concise Oxford Dictionary says of "toff": "perhaps a perversion of 'tuft' = titled undergraduate (from the gold tassel formerly worn on the cap)".

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Pretty much what the World Wide Words guy, Michael Quinion, says. Toffee Tarrant!

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

I think Avon may have started as a Beta technician and been promoted to Alpha

Sounds utterly plausible to me. I like the idea that the grades are flexible, unlike in Brave New World.

[hafren.livejournal.com]

Is it fair, though, to say that Blake hasn't got practical skills? He seemed to have a fairly good idea how the Liberator worked, though admittedly that could be theory - hell, I'm coming around to this....

[matildabj.livejournal.com]

They all seemed to have an uncanny knack for flying spaceships, if you ask me.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Maybe they're as easy as cars are for us, but Jenna's got more the Michael Schumacher level of skills.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Blake could have been in design or management on the matter transmission project which would explain why he and Avon, a technician, never met. Though it was a big project...

This is interesting; unfortunately it's my bedtime. :-(

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

Well, it makes sense to me. I have a whole theory about grades, and even have an essay (http://www.farsight.net.nz/essays/grades.htm) on my site about it, written as a new fan. I think there's quite a bit of in-built inertia, otherwise society would be very unstable if children from one family could all test as different grades, and Federation society strikes me as very reactionary. In my canon, only the top and bottom extremes are promoted or demoted, which would explain some of Avon's attitude and Vila's remarks about a friend at the testing centre. (In fact I wrote a story about that last week for b7friday, soon to be cross-posted here.) Also, going by Jarvik becoming a labour grade so he could use his only attributes (muscle) I assume that people could also choose demotion. I've used that in a story I hope will be in the next Chronicles.

[reapermum.livejournal.com]

And there's my essay, http://www.hermit.org/Blakes7/Essays/Gradings.html, with flexible grades and a delta Avon.

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

I'd read that before and I enjoyed it all over again; thank you! It makes a lot of sense! I suppose the main difference between our two theories is that I have only the top and bottom few percent being moved, and people being able to choose a lower grade. The only things I'm not sure about are the disruption to family life and the destabilising of society, and Avon wanting to find Delta parents. I think he'd prefer to think of himself as always superior.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Oh, well, you've all heard my class analysis of Blake and Avon ad infinitum--one interesting question is *Servalan*'s status. Possibly Sleer is her lower-grade self and Servalan a facade she was able to construct (and nobody's still around to contradict it).

[vilakins.livejournal.com]

She'd still have to be high-grade to have the power she does as commissioner though. But I like the idea of her assuming Servalan rather than Sleer as an identity, though we do know she was Servalan when she was taught by Kasabi so I doubt it would hold up.

[executrix.livejournal.com]

Norma Jean Baker turned into Marilyn Monroe pretty early!