tosheroon

plural tosheroons · alternative tusheroon · alternative tossaroon

1. UKarchaicslangA half-crown coin; its value

   “’Ere y'are, the best rig-out you ever ’ad. A tosheroon [half a crown]^([sic]) for the coat, two ’ogs for the trousers, one and a tanner for the boots, and a ’og for the cap and scarf. That's seven bob.”

   1933 January 9, George Orwell [pseudonym; Eric Arthur Blair], chapter XXIX, in Down and Out in Paris and London, London: Victor Gollancz […], →OCLC, pages 214–215

   1 more example

   tush or tosh. Money: Cockney: late C.19–20. Ex: tusheroon... But H. errs, I believe: he should mean half-a-crown, for tusheroon and its C.20 variant tossaroon (2s. 6d.) are manifest corruptions of Lingua Franca MADZA CAROON.

   1961, Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang

2. UKobsoleteslangA crown coin; its value

   ‘Tush’, for money, would be an abbreviation of ‘tusheroon’, which in old cant, and also in tinker dialect, signified a crown.

   1912, J.W. Horsley, I Remember, xii. 253

   1 more example

   Half-a-crown is known as an alderman, half a bull, half a tusheroon, and a madza caroon; whilst a crown piece, or five shillings, may be called either a bull, or a caroon, or a cartwheel, or a coachwheel, or a thick-un, or a tusheroon.

   1859, J.C. Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words