Tearsheet (Doll), a common courtezan.--Shakespeare, 2 Henry IV. (1598).
Teazle (Sir Peter), a man who, in old age, married a country girl who proved extravagant, fond of pleasure, selfish and vain. Sir Peter was for ever nagging at her for her inferior birth and rustic ways, but secretly loving her and admiring her naïveté. He says to Rowley, “I am the sweetest-tempered man alive, and hate a teasing temper, and so I tell her ladyship a hundred times a day.”
Lady Teazle, a lively, innocent, country maiden, who married Sir Peter, old enough to be her grandfather. Planted in London in the whirl of the season, she formed a liaison with Joseph Surface, but, being saved from disgrace, repented and reformed.--R. B. Sheridan, School for Scandal (1777).
Teeth. Rigord, an historian of the thirteenth century, tells that when Chosroës, the Persian, carried away the true cross discovered by St. Helĕna, the number of teeth in the human race was reduced. Before that time, Christians were furnished with thirty, and in some cases with thirty-two teeth, but since then no human being has had more than twenty-three teeth.--See Historiens de France, xviii.
⁂ The normal number of teeth is thirty-two still. This “historic fact” is of a piece with that which ascribes to woman one more rib than to man.
Teetotal. The origin of this word is ascribed to Richard (Dicky) Turner, who, in addressing a temperance meeting in September, 1833, reduplicated the word total to give it emphasis: “We not only want total abstinence, we want more, we want t-total abstinence.” The novelty and force of the expression took the meeting by storm.
It is not correct to ascribe the word to Mr. Swindlehurst, of Preston, who is erroneously said to have stuttered.
Te´ian Muse, Anacreon, born at Teïos, in Ionia, and called by Ovid (Tristia, ii. 364) Teïa Musa (B.C. 563-478).
The Scian and the Teian Muse ... [Simonidês and Anacreon]
Have found the fame your shores refuse.