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

[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!