[Origin unknown.] A name said to have been formerly given in the Staffordshire potteries to a porringer; now applied by antiquaries and collectors to a drinking-cup with two or more handles, attributed to the 17th and 18th c.
1838. Bosworth, Anglo-Sax. Dict., s.v. Tigel, To this day porringers are called tigs by the working potters.
1855. H. de la Beche & T. Reeks, Catal. Specimens Brit. Pottery, etc., Mus. Pract. Geol., 116. Three handled tyg, a drinking cup of the time, so handled that three different persons, drinking out of it, and each using a separate handle, bring their mouths to different parts of the rim.
1865. Eliza Meteyard, Life J. Wedgwood, I. 76. The tyg or cup, with two or more handles, was a favourite drinking vessel in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
1880. C. H. Poole, Gloss. Stafford, Tyg, a two-handled cup.
1892. Raine, Handbk. to York Museum, 169. Cruses and tygs of black and brown ware.
