A coworker just asked me if I knew what “toto” meant – and he wasn’t talking about Dorothy’s dog. Or, for that matter, a Latin word for “entirely.” According to him, it’s a word for a kind of slave.
In context, our company president was apparently referring to the sales team as a bunch of totos. This guy and several other people knew what he was talking about.
I’ve never heard the word used that way before. A brief google search turned up little of interest – and I wasn’t about to click on the slash fiction links here at work.
Has anyone else heard of the slave kind of toto? Is that even how it’s spelled? Where does it come from?
Main Entry: ro·bot
Pronunciation: 'rO-"bät, -b&t
Function: noun
Etymology: Czech, from robota compulsory labor; akin to Old High German arabeit trouble, Latin orbus orphaned – more at ORPHAN
Date: 1923
1 a : a machine that looks like a human being and performs various complex acts (as walking or talking) of a human being; also : a similar but fictional machine whose lack of capacity for human emotions is often emphasized b : an efficient insensitive person who functions automatically
2 : a device that automatically performs complicated often repetitive tasks
3 : a mechanism guided by automatic controls
I would have said it was pulled out of thin air, but the OED has this entry:
[quote}toto
[ad. Swahili mtoto offspring, child.]
In East Africa: a child; a baby; a young animal; a young servant.
[/quote]
Note the last definition.
The quotes are interesting:
Obviously, this usage is obscure. And it means “servant,” not “slave” – though you can see the basis for the confusion. Did the person who used the term ever live in Africa? It’s surprising he’d know of it otherwise.
I believe he was born in one of the northern African countries, so this usage fits. And the “slave” definition was one supplied by people listening to him, not by the person who used it, so a conflation with “servant” makes a fair amount of sense.
This sounds like the likeliest origin for the word. I was really wondering if it was slang, or if it was of foreign origin. Sounds like the latter.
My guess is that your President is a moron with a speech impediment.
He perhaps was calling them “dodos.”
Since I got the idea that you, personally, didn’t hear the Pres. say it, but only heard it from a cow-orker, it might have lost something in the translation.