[f. TIP sb.1 + -Y.]
I. colloq. or slang. 1. In the height of fashion; smart, fine, fashionable, ‘swell,’ ‘tip-top.’ ? Obs.
1810. Splendid Follies, I. 31. ‘My curricle has … never yet carried a bear,’ ‘Except its Master,’ thought Seraphina, as she gazed on this tippy-bob.
1825. Jamieson, Tippy, adj., dressed in the highest fashion, modish.
1826. Sporting Mag., XVII. 177. With his hosen so tight, and his castor so white, and his caxon in tippy curl.
1847. Blackw. Mag., LXII. 47. His horse was the swiftest, his coat the tippiest, his cigar the longest.
1871. P. Cartwright, 50 Years Presiding Elder, 216. It was not one of your tippy, fashionable, silver-slippered kind of conversions, but it was a backwoods conversion.
† b. absol. The tippy: the height of fashion; the ‘swell’ or fashionable thing. Obs.
1794. Sporting Mag., III. 104. Being estimated … as quite the Tippy. Ibid. (1803), XXI. 145. The two-shilling gallery is now quite the tippy for the boxes.
1804. Charlotte Smith, Conversations, etc., I. 25. Germain says, I shall be quite the thing, the tippy.
1811. Ora & Juliet, III. 133. Do you see that handsome young man there?… he at the bottom,… that’s so dressed in the tippy.
2. Highly ingenious or clever; neat, smart. [perh. associated with TIP sb.4]
1863. M. Dods, Early Lett. (1910), 344. A tippy little bit of criticism by Pressensé.
1906. Daily Chron., 11 Oct., 3/5. All we think of is the ‘tippy’ way in which he is got rid of.
II. 3. Of tea: Containing a large proportion of the ‘tips’ or leaf-buds of the shoot.
1892. Walsh, Tea (Philad.), 87. The dried leaf [of Paklum] is also very black, fairly made and often ‘tippy’ in the hand. Ibid., 107. The leaf [of Neilgherry] is black, coarse, ‘tippy’ and unsightly in the hand.
1895. Times, 21 Jan., 13/5. For the finest qualities: for handsome tippy teas, which are becoming scarce; and for good Darjeelings, the tendency is to higher quotations.
