TIRING. Dressing: perhaps abbreviation of ATTIRING. Tiring
women, or tire women: women that used to cut ladies
hair, and dress them.
TIT. A horse; a pretty little tit; a smart little girl.
a *** or tid bit; a delicate morsel. Tommy tit; a smart lively
little fellow.
TIT FOR TAT. An equivalent.
TO TITTER. To suppress a laugh.
TITTER TATTER. One reeling, and ready to fall at the least touch; also the childish amusement of riding upon the two ends of a plank, poised upon the prop underneath its centre, called also see-saw. Perhaps tatter is a rustic pronunciation of totter.
TITTLE-TATTLE. Idle discourse, scandal, women's talk, or small talk.
TITTUP. A gentle hand gallop, or canter.
TIZZY. Sixpence.
TOAD EATER. A poor female relation, and humble companion, or reduced gentlewoman, in a great family, the standing butt, on whom all kinds of practical jokes are played off, and all ill humours vented. This appellation is derived from a mountebank's servant, on whom all experiments used to be made in public by the doctor, his master; among which was the eating of toads, formerly supposed poisonous. Swallowing toads is here figuratively meant for swallowing or putting up with insults, as disagreeable to a person of feeling as toads to the stomach.
TOAD. Toad in a hole; meat baked or boiled in pye-crust. He or she sits like a toad on a chopping-block; a saying of any who sits ill on horseback. As much need of it as a toad of a side-pocket; said of a person who desires any thing for which he has no real occasion. As full of money as a toad is of feathers.