tosheroon
Word Rarity
Very rare
Frequency: Zipf frequency 0.00 in modern English
12
Scrabble Score
9
Letters
1
Syllables
7
Unique Chars
Meaning
Example Sentences
- "“’Ere y'are, the best rig-out you ever ’ad. A tosheroon [half a crown]^([sic]) for the coat, two ’ogs for the trousers, one and a tanner for the boots, and a ’og for the cap and scarf. That's seven bob.”"
- "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."
- "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."
- "‘Tush’, for money, would be an abbreviation of ‘tusheroon’, which in old cant, and also in tinker dialect, signified a crown."
Etymology
From 19th-century British slang, developed from or alongside tusheroon, of uncertain derivation from British slang caroon (“crown, a 5-shilling silver coin”), from Sabir and (originally) Italian corona (“crown”). The term was either derived from or influenced by madza caroon, the British slang for the Sabir and Italian mezzo corona (“half-crown”), possibly under influence from tosh (“copper items; valuables”) above or from the half-crown's value of two shillings & sixpence.