or tober, subs. (old cant).1. The road; the highway. Whence HIGH-TOBY = a main road; THE TOBY (TOBY-LAY or TOBY-CONCERN) = highway robbery (see quot. 1785); TOBY-GILL (or TOBY-MAN) = a road thief; HIGHTOBYMAN = a mounted highwayman, LOWTOBYMAN = a footpad; TO TOBY = to rob on the highway; and DONE FOR A TOBY = convicted for highway robbery. Cf. GYPSY TOBER = road.
1785. GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. THE TOBY applies exclusively to robbing on horseback; the practice of footpad robbery being properly called the spice, though it is common to distinguish the former by the title of HIGH-TOBY, and the latter of LOW-TOBY.
1830. BULWER-LYTTON, Paul Clifford, II. xiii. You are a capital fellow! the bravest and truest gill that ever took to THE TOBY. Ibid., I. iv. All the most fashionable prigs or TOBYMEN, sought to get him into their set.
1834. W. H. AINSWORTH, Rookwood (1884), 95, The Game of High Toby.
Believe me, there is not a game, my brave boys, | |
To compare with the game of HIGH TOBY; | |
No rapture can equal the TOBYMANS joys. |
2. (showmens).A pitch for a travelling show.
1893. Standard, 29 Jan., 2. We have to be out in the road early, you know, to secure our TOBY.
3. (old: eighteenth century).A drinking jug or mug: usually a grotesque figure of an old man in a three-cornered hat.
1840. DICKENS, Barnaby Rudge, iv. A jug of well-browned clay, fashioned into the form of an old gentleman. Put TOBY this way, my dear. This TOBY was the brown jug.
4. (venery).The female pudendum: see MONOSYLLABLE.
1678. COTTON, Scarronides, or, Virgil Travestie (1770), 57.
That Fame and Honour she may go by, | |
And let Æneas firk her TOBY. |