Chapter Tannhauser to Tarring and Feathering of T by Brewer's Phrase & Fable

Tapisserie Faire tapisserie. To play gooseberry-picker, to be mere chaperon for the sake of “propriety.” “Se dit des personnes qui assertent á un bal ou á quelque autre grande réunion sans y prendre part.”

“You accepted out of pure kindness faire tapisserie; Mrs. Arbuthnot, you are too amiable.”- Mrs. Edwardes: A Girton Girl, chap. xxvi.

Tappit-hen (A). A huge pewter measuring-pot, containing at least three English quarts. Readers of Waverley will remember (in chap. xi.) the Baron Bradwardine's tappit-hen of claret from Bordeaux. To have a tappit-hen under the belt is to have swallowed three quarts of claret. A hen and chickens means large and small drinking mugs or pewter pots. A tappit was served from the tap. (See Jeroboam. )

“Weel she lo'ed a Hawick gill,
And leugh to see a tappit-hen.”

Tapster, says E. Adams (English Language), properly means a bar-maid; “-ster” is the Anglo-Saxon feminine suffix -estre, which remains in spin-ster (a female spinner).
    This is only a half-truth. After the thirteenth century, the suffix- ster was used for an agent of either sex. We have barrister, gamester, punster, etc., and Wickliffe uses songster for a male singer (See Dr. Morris Historic Outlines, p. 89.)

Tapu, among the South Sea Islanders, means “devoted” in a religious sense. Thus, a temple is tapu, and he who violates a temple is tapu. Not only so, but everyone and everything connected with what is tapu becomes tapu also. Thus, Captain Cook was tapu because some of his sailors took rails from a “temple” of the Hawaiians to supply themselves with fuel, and, being devoted, he was slain. Our taboo is the same word.

Tarabolus or Tantrabolus. We shall live till we die, like Tarabolus [or Tantrabolus ]. Tarabolus, Ali Pacha, was grand vizier in 1693, and was strangled in 1695 by order of Mustapha II.
   We shall live till we die, like Tantrabolus, is said to be a Cornish proverb. There is a cognate saying, “Like Tantrabolus, who lived till he died.”
    Tantarabobs means the devil. Noisily playful children are called Tantrabols.

Tarakee, the Brahmin, was the model of austere devotion. He lived 1,100 years, and spent each century in some astounding mortification.
   1st century. He held up his arms and one foot towards heaven, fixing his eyes on the sun the whole time.
   2nd century. He stood on tiptoe the whole time.
   8th century. He stood on his head, with his feet towards the sky.
   9th century. He rested wholly on the palm of one hand.
   11th century. He hung from a tree with his head downwards.

“One century he lived wholly on water, another wholly on air, another steeped to the neck in earth, and for another century he was always enveloped in fire. I don't know that the world has been benefited by such devotion.”- Maurice, History of Hindostan

Tarantism The dancing mania, extremely contagious. It broke out in Germany in 1374, and in France in the Great Revolution, when it was called the Carmagnole. Clergymen, judges, men and women, even the aged, joined the mad dance in the open streets till they fell from exhaustion.

Tarantula This word is derived from Taranto the city, or from Thara the river in Apulia, in the vicinity of which the venomous hairy spiders abound. (Kircher: De Arte Mag.)

Tarentella or Tarantella. Tunes and dances in triplets, supposed to cure the dancing mania.

Tariff A list in alphabetical order of the duties, drawbacks, bounties, etc., charged or allowed on exports and imports. The word is derived from Tarifa, a seaport of Spain about twenty miles from Gibraltar, where the Moors, during the supremacy in Spain, levied contributions according to a certain scale on vessels entering the Mediterranean Sea. (French, tarif; Spanish, tarifa.)