Top-sawyer, the principal of a party, or profession. “A TOP-SAWYER signifies a man that is a master-genius in any profession. It is a piece of Norfolk slang, and took its rise from Norfolk being a great timber county, where the TOP SAWYERS get double the wages of those beneath them.”—Randall’s Diary, 1820.
Top up, a finishing drink. “He drank two bottles of claret and one of port, which he TOPPED UP with half a bottle of brandy.”
Topped, hanged, or executed.
Topper, anything or person above the ordinary; a blow on the head. “Give him a TOPPER and chance it,” “Let him have a TOPPER for luck.”
Topper, the tobacco which is left in the bottom of a pipe-bowl—lucus a non lucendo; or the stump of a smoked cigar. Topper-hunters are men who pick up cigar ends and odd pieces of stale tobacco, which they mix and chop up for home consumption or sale.
Topsy-turvy, the bottom upwards. Grose gives an ingenious etymology of this once cant term, viz., “top-side turf-ways,”—turf being always laid the wrong side upwards. This is so far ingenious that it creates a fact for the purpose of arguing from it. Turfs are laid with the grass part together during carriage; so, anyhow, the definition could be only half right. In fact, TOPSY-TURVY is but short for “top-side t’other way.”
To-rights, excellent, very well, or good.—Low London slang.
Tormentors, the large iron flesh-forks used by cooks at sea.
Torpids, the second-class race-boats at Oxford, answering to the Cambridge “sloggers.”
Toshers, men who steal copper from ships’ bottoms in the Thames.