Tosspot

{{Short description|Insult in British English}}

{{Use British English|date=June 2023}}

{{Use dmy dates|date=June 2023}}

Tosspot is a British English and Irish English insult, used to refer to a stupid or contemptible person, or a drunkard.{{cite web|url=http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/tosspot|title=Tosspot|work=Dictionary.com|publisher=Dictionary.com, LLC|accessdate=14 November 2014}}{{cite web|url=http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/tosspot|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20121010015751/http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/tosspot|url-status=dead|archive-date=October 10, 2012|title=Tosspot|work=Oxford dictionaries|publisher=Oxford University Press|accessdate=14 November 2014}}

The word is of Middle English origin, and meant a person who drank heavily. Beer or ale was customarily served in ceramic pots, so a tosspot was a person who copiously "tossed back" such pots of beer. The word "tosspots" appears in relation to drunkenness in the song which closes Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.Shakespeare, William, Twelfth Night, 5.1. The morality play Like Will to Like, by Shakespeare's contemporary Ulpian Fulwell, contains a character named Tom Tosspot, who remarks that

{{poemquote|If any poore man have in a whole week earned a grote,

He shal spend it in one houre in tossing the pot.{{Citation | last=Fulwell | first=Ulpian | title=Like Will to Like | url=http://www.umm.maine.edu/faculty/necastro/drama/tudor/lwtl.html }}.}}

Tosspot is also a character in the traditional British Pace Egg play or mummers' play.{{cite web|url=http://www.folkplay.info/Texts/89sd39ch.htm|title=Hawkshead Easter Pace-Egg Play - 1898 |last=Cowper|first=H.S.|date=24 February 2002|accessdate=14 November 2014}}{{Cite web |last= |first= |date= |title=Folk play: Christmas is a-coming Mumming |url=http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getplay.php?id=1180 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20141129013538/http://history.wiltshire.gov.uk/community/getplay.php?id=1180 |archive-date=29 November 2014 |website=Wiltshire Community History |publisher=Wiltshire Council |via=Internet Archive}}

In the Pace Egging Song which accompanies the play, the verse for "Old Tosspot" is:

{{poemquote|And the last that comes in is Old Tosspot you see.

He's a valiant old man, in every degree.

He's a valiant old man and he wears a pig tail.

And all his delight is in drinking mulled ale!}}

As with most traditional folk songs, the exact words vary.

In the chapter "Step Eight" of the Alcoholics Anonymous book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions by Bill Wilson, the phrase "... tosspot call[ing] a kettle black" causes some confusion for readers who are not familiar with the adage. In the original editions of the book it stated "that is like the pot calling the kettle black." The old saying means a person who is as flawed as the person he or she is criticizing has no right to complain about the other's flaws. The pot, after all, is as blackened by the flames as the kettle. Wilson's pun places the tosspot, or the drunk, in the position of the flawed individual who should not criticize others."Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions", p78, LG236CElectronic .PDF version, September 2005+ {{ISBN|0-916856-01-1}},Alcoholics Anonymous World Services, Inc.{{cite web |url=http://www.guardureyes.com/GUE/PDFs/The%2012-Steps%20and%2012%20traditions.pdf |title=Archived copy |accessdate=2012-03-27 |url-status=usurped |archiveurl=https://web.archive.org/web/20120327013827/http://www.guardureyes.com/GUE/PDFs/The%2012-Steps%20and%2012%20traditions.pdf |archivedate=2012-03-27 }}

The word is also found in the Roman Catholic Knox Bible, in translating Proverbs 23:30: "Who but the tosspot that sits long over his wine?"{{Cite web|date=|others=v. 30|title=Holy Bible: Proverbs 23 |url=https://www.newadvent.org/bible/pro023.htm|access-date=2020-06-20|website=www.newadvent.org}} (This is a free translation, and does not occur in other translations: for example, the King James Version renders this verse "they that tarry long at the wine; they that go to seek mixed wine".)