Chapter TOPE-KHANA to TOUCAN of T by The Hobson Jobson Dictionary

horses, or other things of value are given him, they are accepted, and are immediately handed over to the tosh khana or Government Treasury.…”—Lady Dufferin, Viceregal Life, 75.]

TOSTDAUN, s. Military Hind. tosdan for a cartouche-box. The word appears to be properly Pers. toshadan, ‘provision-holder,’ a wallet.

[1841.—“This last was, however, merely ‘tos-dan kee awaz’—a cartouch-box report—as our sepoys oddly phrase a vague rumour.”—Society in India, ii. 223.]

TOTY, s. Tam. totti, Canar. totiga, from Tam. tondu, ‘to dig,’ properly a low-caste labourer in S. India, and a low-caste man who in villages receives certain allowances for acting as messenger, &c., for the community, like the gorayt of N. India. 1730.—“Il y a dans chaque village un homme de service, appellé Totti, qui est chargé des impositions publiques.”—Lettr. Edif. xiii. 371.

[1883.—“The name Toty being considered objectionable, the same officers in the new arrangements are called Talaiaris (see TALIAR,TARRYAR) when assigned to Police, and Vettians when employed in Revenue duties.”—Le Fanu, Man. of Salem, ii. 211.]

TOUCAN, s. This name is very generally misapplied by Europeans to the various species of Hornbill, formerly all styled Buceros, but now subdivided into various genera. Jerdon says: “They (the hornbills) are, indeed, popularly called Toucans throughout India; and this appears to be their name in some of the Malayan isles; the word signifying ‘a worker,’ from the noise they make.” This would imply that the term did originally belong to a species of hornbill, and not to the S. American Rhamphastes or Zygodactyle. Tukang is really in Malay a ‘craftsman or artificer’; but the dictionaries show no application to the bird. We have here, in fact, a remarkable instance of the coincidences which often justly perplex etymologists, or would perplex them if it were not so much their habit to seize on one solution and despise the others. Not only is tukang in Malay ‘an artificer,’ but, as Willoughby tells us, the Spaniards called the real S. American toucan ‘carpintero’ from the noise he makes. And yet there seems no doubt that Toucan is a Brazilian name for a Brazilian bird. See the quotations, and especially Thevet’s, with its date.

The Toucan is described by Oviedo (c. 1535), but he mentions only the name by which “the Christians” called it,—in Ramusio’s Italian Picuto (? Beccuto; Sommario, in Ramusio, iii. f. 60). [Prof. Skeat (Concise Dict. s.v.) gives only the Brazilian derivation. The question is still further discussed, without any very definite result, save that it is probably an imitation of the cry of the bird, in N. & Q. 9 ser. vii. 486; viii. 22, 67, 85, 171, 250.]

1556.—“Sur la coste de la marine, la plus frequete marchandise est le plumage d’vn oyseau, qu’ils appellent en leur langue Toucan, lequel descrivons sommairement puis qu’il vient à propos. Cest oyseau est de la grandeur d’vn pigeon.…Au reste cest oyseau est merveilleusement difforme et monstrueux, ayant le bec plus gros et plus long quasi que le reste du corps.”—Les Singularitez de la France Antarticque, autrement nommée Amerique.…Par T. André Theuet, Natif d’ Angoulesme, Paris, 1558, f. 91.

1648.—“Tucana sive Toucan Brasinensibus: avis picae aut palumbi magnitudine.…Rostrum habet ingens et nonnumquam palmum longum, exterius flavam.…Mirum est autem videri possit quomodo tantilla avis tam grande rostrum ferat: sed levissimum est.”—GeorgI MarcgravI de Liebstad, Hist. Rerum Natur. Brasiliae. Lib. V. cap. xv., in Hist. Natur. Brasil. Lugd. Bat. 1648, p. 217.

See also (1599) Aldrovandus, Ornitholog. lib. xii. cap. 19, where the word is given toucham.

Here is an example of misapplication to the Hornbill, though the latter name is also given:

1885.—“Soopah (in N. Canara) is the only region in which I have met with the toucan or great hornbill.…I saw the comical looking head with its huge aquiline beak, regarding me through a fork in the branch: and I account it one of the best shots I ever made, when I sent a ball…through the head just at its junction with the handsome orange-coloured helmet which surmounts it. Down came the toucan with outspread wings, dead apparently; but when my peon Manoel raised him by the thick muscular neck, he fastened his great claws on his hand, and made the wood resound with a succession of roars more like a bull than a bird.”—Gordon Forbes, Wild Life in Canara, &c. pp. 37–38.