[dim. or pet form of TOM: cf. baby, dolly, Bobby, Teddy, etc.]
1. With capital T: Familiar form of Thomas.
b. A simpleton; also, short for tommy-noddy (= TOM-NODDY 1). dial.
1829. Bowles, Days Departed, 44. The tandem-driving Tommy of a town.
1833. P. J. Selby, Illustr. Brit. Ornithol., II. 439. Puffin … Tommy-nodie, Tommey.
1847–78. Halliwell, Tommy … a simple fellow.
1899. Leeds Mercury, Suppl., 6 May (E.D.D.). He’s as big a Tommy as iver I knew.
c. Short for Tommy Atkins: see 7.
1893. Kipling, Many Invent., 28. I was … with sixty Tommies—private soldiers, that is.
1898. Westm. Gaz., 26 Jan., 7/1. An occasional detachment of Tommies with the attendant coolies and sweepers.
1901. Daily Graphic, 23 Feb., 7/4. A vigorous protest is being made on behalf of the dignity of the British line against the use of the too familiar sobriquet ‘Tommy.’
1907. Blackw. Mag., Nov., 651/2. A group of Tommies in uniform.
2. A soldiers’ name for the brown bread formerly supplied as rations (also brown tommy); with a and pl., a loaf of bread (dial.); among workmen, Food, provisions generally, esp. those carried with them to work each day. Soft tommy, white tommy: see quot. 1796. See also TAMMIE.
App. personified as Tommy Brown, altered to brown Tommy and tommy. Similarly a hunk of grey bread distributed at Minto House, as part of a Hogmanay gift to the village children, used to be called Tam Gray.
1783. [see quot. 1830].
1796. Grose, Dict. Vulg. T., s.v., Soft Tommy, or white Tommy; bread is so called by sailors, to distinguish it from biscuit.
1803. in Spirit Pub. Jrnls., VII. 352. A high sea,… without a bit of soft Tommy to put into your lantern jaws.
1811. Lex. Balatr., s.v., Brown Tommy; ammunition bread for soldiers; or brown bread given to convicts at the hulks.
1825. Brockett, N. C. Words, Tommy, a little loaf. ‘A soldier’s tommy.’
1830. in W. Cobbett, Rur. Rides (1885), II. 353. When I was a recruit at Chatham barracks, in the year 1783, we had brown bread served out to us twice in the week. And, for what reason God knows, we used to call it tommy.… Any one that could get white bread called it ‘bread,’ but the brown stuff … was called ‘tommy.’
1846. Camp & Barrack-Room, ii. 16. After I had breakfasted upon tommy and insipid coffee.
1865. Slang Dict., Tommy, bread,—generally a penny roll. Sometimes applied by workmen to the supply of food which they carry … as their daily allowance.
1911. H. F. Rutter, Lett. to Editor. Used in provincial dialects and invariably by English navvies as a synonym for food. ‘I was that bad I couldn’t eat my tommy.’ ‘Go into the stable and give that old horse his tommy.’
b. Goods; esp. provisions supplied to workmen under the truck system; also, short for tommy-shop, and for the truck system.
1830. [implied in tommy-shop, system in 6].
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, III. i. Diggs’ tommy is only open once a-week. Ibid., III. iii. What are you doing here, little dear?; very young to fetch tommy.
1856. Househ. Words, 21 June, 545/1. The navvy knows that he is a helpless being if he cannot get his tommy; and this word … signifies beer, bacon, cheese, coffee, bread, butter, and tobacco.
1860. Slang Dict., Tommy, a truck, barter, the exchange of labour for goods, not money.
3. As the name of something small of its kind. a. See quot. a. 1825. b. A spanner; a screw-driver.
a. 1825. Forby, Voc. E. Anglia, Tommy, a small spade to excavate the narrow bottoms of under-drains [1895 Gloss. E. Anglia adds ‘Also a small wrench used by engineers’].
1844. Civil Eng. & Arch. Jrnl., VII. 35/1. On giving motion to the screw, which is effected by means of a tommy, or spanner.
1881. Hasluck, Lathe Work, 179. Hooked tommys are employed to actuate all those capstan headed screws and nuts which from insufficiency in the depth of the holes do not afford a hold for the ordinary straight forward tommy.
c. The smallest of the gazelles, Thomson’s gazelle, of East Africa. [Here orig. from Thomson.]
1906. Westm. Gaz., 2 June, 2/2. It is a pretty sight to see a herd of the graceful little Thomson’s gazelle (locally called Tommies) mingling with a flock of sheep and goats.
1912. Contemp. Rev., Lit. Suppl., Jan., 137. Mr. Barnes came across the gigantic eland … Grant’s gazelle, Tommy, oryx [etc.].
4. A gold-washing trough; = TOM 4 a.
1892. Pall Mall G., 10 Aug., 2/1. At the end of the tiny creek, where a ‘tommy’ was … set in motion to wash the alluvial soil and extract the tiny glittering particles of gold.
5. (Usually soft tommy.) Pewter solder (PEWTER 6) used by jewelers.
1877. G. E. Gee, Practical Gold-worker, 137. ‘Soft solder’ … commonly called in the jewellery trade ‘soft tommy.’
1912. Let. from Jeweler to Editor. Tommy or soft tommy means the ordinary lead or pewter solder that is in common use for repairing Britannia metal or lead articles.
6. attrib. and Comb.; chiefly in senses 2, 2 b, as tommy-box, -master, system; tommy-bag, a bag in which a workman or school-boy carries his day’s food; tommy-book, an account book of goods supplied on the truck system; tommy-cod = TOM-COD a.; tommy-day, a day on which a tommy-shop is open; Tommy Dod(d, the ‘odd man’ in odd-man-out (ODD D. 2); tommy-hole, one of two or more holes in a nut, into which steel pins can be inserted to turn it; tommy-long-legs, the daddy-long-legs; tommy-noddy, -norie = TOM-NODDY; tommy-plough = tom-plough (TOM sb. 7 a); tommy-rot, nonsense, bosh, twaddle; hence tommyrotic a. [after erotic], nonsensical; tommy-shop, a store (esp. one run by the employer) at which vouchers given to employees instead of money wages may be exchanged for goods; a truck-shop; also attrib.; Tommy-touchwood, the game of ‘touch wood.’
1873. Slang Dict., s.v. Tommy, *Tommy-Bag is the term for the bag or handkerchief in which the [workman’s tommy or] ‘daily bread’ is carried.
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, III. i. You know as how Juggins applied for his balance after his *tommy-book was paid up.
1906. Westm. Gaz., 2 July, 5/2. The rescuers ultimately found the two men alive in the old workings…. Without food, their *‘tommy’ boxes having been washed away by the flood, they subsisted on a few candles.
1879. J. Burroughs, Locusts & W. Honey, Halcyon (1884), 310. From Rivière du Loup, where we passed the night and ate our first *‘Tommy-cods.’
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, III. iii. It’s grand *tommy-day you know.
1873. Slang Dict., *Tommy-Dodd, in tossing when the odd man either wins or loses, as per agreement.
1884. Punch, 16 Feb., 73/2. A gambling game known as ‘Tommy Dod’ is extensively practised.
1897. Pemberton, Compl. Cyclist, 125. The head nut, which could be made with a milled edge, and with *tommy holes to start it if stuck beyond finger power.
1863. Atkinson, Stanton Grange (1864), 84. Large flies, may-flies, *tommy-longlegs, and grasshoppers.
1860. Slang Dict., *Tommy-master, one who pays his workmen in goods, or gives them tickets upon tradesmen, with whom he shares the profit.
1849. W. & H. Raynbird, Agric. Suffolk, 301. The tom or *tommy plough is a plough with a double breast for ridging, or for clearing out furrows.
1882. Junction City (KS) Republican, 22 April, 2/2. They cannot turn down his plan without being inconsistent and admitting to the world that the referendum plank in their platforms was buncome and *tommy-rot.
1884. Moore, Mummer’s Wife (1887), 25. Bill … said it was all ‘Tommy rot.’
1899. Mary Kingsley, W. African Stud., ii. 41. My fellow newcomers … thought nothing of calling some of our instructor’s best information ‘Tommy Rot’!
1894. Yorkshire Herald, 18 Aug., 9/6. ON TICK.—The Modern Novel is a blend of the Erotic, the Neurotic, and the Tommyrotic.
1895. Chicago Advance, 4 July, 4/1. A whole school of what has been humorously called erotic and *tommyrotic realists … asserting that progress in art requires the elimination of moral ideas.
1830. in W. Cobbett, Rur. Rides (1885), II. 354. A *tommy shop: a … place containing every commodity that the workman can want, liquor and house-room excepted.
1833. Wade, Hist. Mid. & Working Classes (1835), 113. An effort was made by 1 & 2 Wm. IV. c. 37 to put an end to what are termed tommy shops, and the practice so general … of paying wages in goods, in lieu of coin and banknotes.
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, III. i., note. The Butty generally keeps a Tommy or Truck shop, and pays the wages of his labourers in goods.
1882. Standard, 26 Dec., 2/3. The ‘foggers,’ or ‘Tommy shop’ men, live lives of contentment,… at the expense of the poor nail-workers.
1830. in W. Cobbett, Rur. Rides (1885), II. 352. In the iron country … the truck or *tommy system generally prevails.
1876. Miss Braddon, J. Haggard’s Dau., ix. The children playing *Tommy Touchwood under the chestnuts.
7. Tommy Atkins. Familiar form of Thomas Atkins, as a name for the typical private soldier in the British army: for origin, see THOMAS 3; hence transf. a private in any army; also, one of the rank and file in any organization.
1883. Sala, in Illustr. Lond. News, 7 July, 3/3. Private Tommy Atkins, returning from Indian service.
1887. St. Andrews Citizen (Dixon). In the privacy of his house Tommy Atkins may … hold his baby in his arms.
1892. Kipling, Barrack-r. Ballads, Tommy. God bless you, Tommy Atkins, We’re all the world to you.
1893. F. Adams, New Egypt, 101. The Egyptian Tommy Atkins inspires one rapidly with feelings of sheer affection.
1898. E. J. Hardy, in United Service Mag., March, 646. Some years ago, Lord Wolseley … said, ‘I won’t call him Tommy Atkins myself, for I think it is a piece of impertinence to call the private soldier Tommy Atkins.’ Ibid., 649. From talks with these men, I have learned to know and respect Tommy Atkins.
Hence Tommy v., trans. to subject to the tommy system; to enforce the truck system on; Tommyhood, the condition or state of a Tommy.
1845. Disraeli, Sybil, III. i. The fact is we are tommied to death.
1857. J. Miller, Alcohol (1858), 66, note. The razor is kept from Tommy in his Tommyhood.
