TIFFIN, s. Luncheon, Anglo-Indian and Hindustani, at least in English households. Also to Tiff, v. to take luncheon. Some have derived this word from Ar. tafannun, 'diversion, amusement,' but without history, or evidence of such an application of the Arabic word. Others have derived it from Chinese ch'ih-fan, 'eat-rice,' which is only an additional example that anything whatever may be plausibly resolved into Chinese monosyllables. We believe the word to be a local survival of an English colloquial or slang term. Thus we find in the Lexicon Balatronicum, compiled originally by Capt. Grose (1785): "Tiffing, eating or drinking out of meal-times," besides other meanings. Wright (Dict. of Obsolete and Provincial English) has: "Tiff, s. (1) a draught of liquor, (2) small beer;" and Mr. Davies (Supplemental English Glossary) gives some good quotations both of this substantive and of a verb "to tiff," in the sense of 'take off a draught.' We should conjecture that Grose's sense was a modification of this one, that his "tiffing" was a participial noun from the verb to tiff, and that the Indian tiffin is identical with the participial noun. This has perhaps some corroboration both from the form "tiffing" used in some earlier Indian examples, and from the Indian use of the verb "to Tiff." [This view is accepted by Prof. Skeat, who derives tiff from Norweg. tev, 'a drawing in of the breath, sniff,' teva, 'to sniff' (Concise Dict. s.v.; and see 9 ser. N. & Q. iv. 425, 460, 506; v. 13).] Rumphius has a curious passage which we have tried in vain to connect with the present word; nor can we find the words he mentions in either Portuguese or Dutch Dictionaries. Speaking of [Toddy] and the like he says:
"Homines autem qui eas (potiones) colligunt ac praeparant, dicuntur Portugallico nomine Tiffadores, atque opus ipsum Tiffar; nostratibus Belgis tyfferen" (Herb. Amboinense, i. 5).
We may observe that the comparatively late appearance of the word tiffin in our documents is perhaps due to the fact that when dinner was early no lunch was customary. But the word, to have been used by an English novelist in 1811, could not then have been new in India.
We now give examples of the various uses:
TIFF, s. In the old English senses (in which it occurs also in the form tip, and is probably allied to tipple and tipsy); [see Prof. Skeat, quoted above].
(1) For a draught:
1758.—"Monday ... Seven. Returned to my room. Made a tiff of warm punch, and to bed before nine."—Journal of a Senior Fellow, in the Idler, No. 33.
(2) For small beer:
1604.—
"... make waste more prodigal