tosheroon

English

Alternative forms

• tusheroon, tossaroon

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.

Noun

tosheroon (plural tosheroons)

1. (British, archaic slang) A half-crown coin; its value
   • 1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXIX, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, pages 214–215:

     “’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.”

   • 1961, Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang:

     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.

2. (British, obsolete slang) A crown coin; its value
   • 1859, J.C. Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words:

     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.

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

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

Derived terms

• tosh
• tossaroon