»The wonderful songs that nobody ever sings, the wonderful pictures that
nobody ever paints, and all the rest of it. It’s _Tommy rot_!» (P. Kelver
II. 208. 14.)
_A young lady with a special liking for spirited expressions._
»I’ll make a journalist of you.»—
»Don’t talk _rot_.» (Tommy And Co. 36. 12.)
_A London brat of the working class._
_Rot_ is the most usual word at present for _rubbish_, _nonsense_;
»_rotten_» is still more modern and ‘stylish’.
(_Tommy rot_: nonsense, bosh.)
toss off
»He _tossed off_ at one gulp what remained of the stranger’s Vermouth.»
(P. Kelver II. 269. 22.)
_The author._
= _to drink at a draught_, _to gulp_.
tumble to
She said she could never »_tumble to_» the district visiting. (Novel
Notes 81. 15.)
_An actress._
»I reckoned it the very thing she’d _tumble to_.» (T. T. T. 143. 4.)
_Uneducated young man._
The meaning of the above quotations is: (1) she could never _get to care
for_ the district visiting; (2) I considered it the very thing she would
_accept_, _fall in with_.
Another, rather common sense of the expression is: _to understand_.
»I’m a copper and I know my book,
You can _tumble_ by my saucy look.»
(I am a constable and I know the tricks,
as you can understand by my saucy look.)
(A Street Ballad. 1900.)
[Illustration]