822-1: Feedback, Notes and Comments

Toffee nosed Some American readers sought to find an equivalence with their native verb brown-nose but they are opposites, since a brown-noser is a grossly obsequious person, while a toffee-nosed person is snobbish and arrogant (we Brits have not found a need for the verb toffee-nose, since to be toffee-nosed is a state of mind, not an activity).

Michael Grosvenor Myer commented, “Is it not worth noting, even if it might add to the confusion of the terms, that our toffee was often spelt toffy in the nineteenth century? That is how it appeared in the first printings of Alice in Wonderland. I find that Chambers still gives it as an alternative spelling without marking it as obsolete; though I doubt if anyone would so spell it today.” Toffee was indeed in its earlier days spelled toffy, a variant of the much older taffy, originally English dialect. A shift from toffy-nosed to toffee-nosed presumably paralleled the one from toffy to toffee.