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

[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!