I think this was used in the movie Beerfest buy some British sailors but I can’t remember. I’m guessing it is some kind of British slang, but what does it mean?
Same as “wanker.”
Hmmm I guess I’m a bit of a plonker for now knowing that.
Literally: masturbator (from “to toss oneself off”).
Figuratively: jerk + bastard + idiot.
The chap with the caber.
There’s also the common British expression I couldn’t give a toss, ie I couldn’t care less. Same verb (toss=wank) but one couldn’t substitute in this case:* I couldn’t give a wank* would be unidiomatic.
Well, that put a whole 'nother spin on the term, “tosspot”.
Tosspot means as you have indeed surmised.
Also, “that’s a load of [old] toss” - figuratively a particularly vehement expression of “nonsense”.
True. I’ve always wondered how JRR Tolkien got away with using the word in The Hobbit, which was meant as a children’s book (and it’s an *elf *who says it, no less - I thought they were more refined than that).
When did it change from its ‘drunkard’ meaning?
Yeah, you’re being a real numpty.
To be honest, I was unaware that it ever had meant “drunkard”. I certainly wouldn’t use it to mean that in public. Perhaps I’m just wrong here (but at least I’m evidently not the only one).
‘Tosser’ is oh so very Grange Hill '70s style.
Envisage gritty angsty kitchen sink drama.
Like wise ‘twat’, while it is now commonplace to use it to refer to ladies furry front bottoms it used to be quite innoccuos “Look at you, prancing around like a twat on the dance floor”
In that case twat = prat
Nowadays were so much more vulgar and now just state “Your dancing like a cunt you wank…AHHHHH!!!”
Tosser has gone the way of gaylord and wazzock as being words which now say more about the user then the target.
Tis the end of civilisation I tells ye!
Maybe its an American thing. I’ve never heard of the mastubation angle until this thread.
It’s always been slang for female genitalia, even as far back as 1660.
Tosser is still in everyday use round my way. I haven’t heard Gaylord since I was about 5, and I always thought wazzock was pretty much a norvern thing.
“Berk” is a favourite of mine, but I’ll let someone else explain it.
Tosser is meaningless, like twat used to be.
If there is a huge Tosser = Wanker revival then maybe it would re-attain it’s significance.
I can’t see it happening.
“Oi, ya bastard” is theorhetically quite insulting, it doesn’t actually come across that way.
Twat is/was never meaningless.
Inflection and context, imo are the deciding factors on how offensive they are at any given moment.
Tosser is frequently accompanied by the open fist/wrist waggle (I don’t know how to describe it) hand gesture, so its meaning is pretty much intact imo.
I just asked my father in law, who was born and raised in Portsmith, and he suggested the best "north american " translation would be “Jerk Off”… (A useless sort who masturbates a bit too frequently…) As in “that jerk off/tosser couldn’t pour pee out of boot with instructions written on the heel!”
Regards
FML
Szlater your too Northern for your own good.
You think waggling hands about and saying in lowly breathed tones “tosser” carries much weight in southern society?
Physical violence is the only recourse to such polemic.
While your etymology for the word “twat” is correct, it’s offensive nature has actually only been ‘actualised’ over the last 20 years.
You want to surround yourself with college educated folk, instead of the working class bastages which are pervading your thinking … ya bastard!
That would be a really good trick. I was born in Sussex, raised in South London.
Yeah, I’ll tell that to my colleagues in cancer research.