Anyone know what the origin is for the phrase of “tough titties,” meaning someone will be out of luck?
No origin, but alternates on the complete phrase:
Tough titties said the kitty, but the milk’s still good!
or
Tough titties said the kitty, when the cow went meow.
1920s or earlier. That’s all I got for now.
I’ve never heard tough titties used in a phrase. Where and when did you hear these?
Midwest US, 60’s through now.
It also seems to be used in the UK.
If the breast isn’t supple, is it hard (or impossible) to get milk from?
Elementary school.
SoCal, '80s: ‘“Tough titty,” said the kitty when the milk ran dry.’
So it’s a 1920’s style tough phrase?
Tough tittie said the kitty, but the milks ok. HS, maybe Jr. high
The one I always heard was “tough titty said the kitty and the milk tastes shitty.”
Tough titty said the kitty when the cow went dry.
Tough titty said the calf when the cow went dry.
There are many variations and it goes way back further than the 60’s. I learned it from my mother’s farm family. I’m not sure what the original source would have been. Like many things it may not have a printed source and just spread via the school yard and all the different rhymes our active minds could think up.
I always heard it as “tough titty”, not titties.
Time to turn to my old favourite reference book, Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang:
(where “titty” has the meaning you’d expect - for some reason sense 1 is “milk”)
Interestingly, it also lists “tough takkie” as a South African phrase dating to the 1910s, which although it sounds similar, uses the word for a canvas sneaker/plimsoll.
Using Google Books, with the caution that dates are not always reliable, I think that my link is from 1921. I don’t have time to search inside the book this morning.
Unfortunately, Jon Lighter’s third(and fourth?) volume of Historical Dictionary of American Slang is still in preparation. If it were published, it would pretty well answer the question.
Here’s interesting stuff I ran across, but doesn’t have the phrase tough titty.
There are a number of old texts that speak of easy times in the past with reference to titty mama, titty bottle, or titty. Some of the same texts then mentioned the times are tough. There was also mention of after time they were tough as leather and they were speaking of titty. Scottish and English plays and stories seem to have the majority of reference to titty.
There is also a nursery story with Titty mouse and Tatty mouse, but Titty died, and then Tatty with every thing around. Is this related to tit for tat?
I’m done with my search for titty as there is too much on the subject in these old texts.
Technically, this type of phrase (“X,” said Y, as something-or-other) is known as a “wellerism.” Another is: “I see,” said the blind man, as he picked up his hammer and saw.
I first heard it as “tough titty” in the late 1970s in W. Penna., when I was in high school. Not much since then.
That’s the version I heard in Oklahoma in the 1960s, from a woman who was in her late 50s.
It appears to me that alliteration is part its formation (cf. “bad bongos” & “tough takkie” mentioned above). It may be that “titty/titties” has less to do with teats than with the letter “T.”
Valkyries, with reference to those chain-mail bras? 
I agree. The basic sense is just “tough”. Adding a second word can reinforce that, especially if it’s a verboten word in polite society, and alliteration or rhyming words always seem to fit better.