Definitions

from The Century Dictionary.

  • In the ton; fashionable; modish; stylish.

Etymologies

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Examples

  • Aha! if you could look into my little reader an 'see the names o' some o 'my most promisin' children they'd as-tonish you.

    The Amateur Gentleman Jeffery Farnol 1915

  • As for my mother's traits of inborn refinement, they were marked enough, but she writes of herself to her sister at this time, "You cannot think how I cannot be in the least tonish, such is my indomitable simplicity of style."

    Memories of Hawthorne Rose Hawthorne Lathrop 1888

  • [992] Miss Burney wrote, in 1780: -- 'Do you know now that, notwithstanding Bath-Easton is so much laughed at in London, nothing here is more tonish than to visit Lady Miller.

    Life of Johnson, Volume 2 1765-1776 James Boswell 1767

  • _tonish_ style, besides he is at present taller than his father.

    Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters A Family Record Richard Arthur Austen-Leigh

  • Lady Caroline Leslie was the very life of fashion, and gave in to every species of tonish dissipation; but gambling was her prevailing fault: she would have been handsome, had not the continual vigils of deep play rendered her complexion too sallow, and her eyes too hollow for any art to restore to their native hue and lustre: she was not averse to gallantry, and so ready to assist it in another, that she has even facilitated the elopement of a sister from her husband, that she might fly to the arms of another married lover!

    Romance Readers and Romance Writers: a Satirical Novel 1810

  • THE letter which the Reverend Mr. Marsham had received, contained a few lines informing him the Right Honorable incumbent was coming to pass six weeks at his living; and as his retinue, composing his family and tonish friends, were weary of the watering-place they had just been honouring with their company, were to come with him, he had favored his curate with the commission of ordering the house-keeper at the spacious parsonage-house to have the beds well-aired, and every thing in order to receive her master, his lady, and her sister; with three gentlemen of rank and fortune, together with an humble female friend.

    Romance Readers and Romance Writers: a Satirical Novel 1810

  • As the modern man of fashion, when an exterior compliance with the tonish habits of high life rendered simulation and conformity necessary, he generally acquitted himself in a style that seemed to say he was only in his proper element, and met with his equals alone in the first circles of elegant society; but the real character of this young and amiable man never appeared in its true colouring to such advantage, as, when freed from the trammels situation and circumstances frequently imposed upon it, he found himself at liberty to follow the genuine bent of inclination, which secretly pointed to rational enjoyments, pleasures unaccompanied by the sting of after reproach, and a participation in all the milder and more tranquil virtues to be met with in the less elevated stations of private life.

    Stella of the North, or the Foundling of the Ship 1802

  • [992] Miss Burney wrote, in 1780: ” 'Do you know now that, notwithstanding Bath-Easton is so much laughed at in London, nothing here is more tonish than to visit Lady Miller.

    Life Of Johnson Boswell, James, 1740-1795 1887

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