Definitions
from Wiktionary, Creative Commons Attribution/Share-Alike License.
- noun Plural form of
tosspot .
Etymologies
Sorry, no etymologies found.
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Examples
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The whippoorwill would merit special status among "tosspots" because of its tucked-in adjective if one could be sure it was falsely boasting of its own obsessive sadism rather than odiously begging somebody else to do it or even, perhaps, reporting a crime.
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Rounding out the human "tosspots" are three interesting foreigners.
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There is a cluster of "tosspots" beginning with make -, some of which do or can refer to persons, but their backs are often broken by hyphens, and a first-class "tosspot" retains a hyphen only to clarify pronunciation (e.g. drop-piss, stretch-halter).
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These qualities of energy, imagery and succinctness make "tosspots" ideal for invective, frequently with a humorous twist.
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Surely we need more "tosspots" to strengthen and enliven our language, though not as much as we need more Thurbers.
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As for "tosspots" that exclusively denote women, all I have found accuse them of immoral behavior: flingdust and flingstink, and the milder shaketail and wagtail (which is also the name of a bird that performs the gesture in a less suggestive manner).
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Even the most straightforward, practical "tosspots" bristle with energy and imagery in comparison with commoner types of composite nouns -- breakwater, scarecrow, pickpocket, shearwater (a bird that flies swiftly and smoothly a few inches above the surface of the sea).
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What makes Thurber's achievement even more remarkable is that he was not consciously coining "tosspots"; he was losing sleep trying to think of words with specific letter combinations such as "abc" and "sgr" to use in Superghosts.
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Perhaps the best thing to do with "tosspots" is to make up new ones.
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[V, 1] has, surprisingly, omitted one of the most colorful and expressive "tosspots" of all, viz. rotgut ` an adulterated or unwholesome liquor, 'and a phenomenon which your real-world tosspot is just as likely to encounter as its physiological and etymological corollary (in colloquial British English at least): gutrot ` bellyache.'
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