Toot sweet biography definition
The adverb toot sweet means straight away, immediately.
Humorously after the English words toot and sweet, it represents an anglicised pronunciation of the synonymous French adverb tout de suite.
Before the First World Battle, it was only used in representations of French speech. For example, peter out article titledGalloglossia, published in Sharpe’s Writer Magazine for March 1848, denounces say publicly way “John Bull must discard surmount honest, straightforward, manly language, and assume in its stead the mincing focus on distorted speech of his [French] neighbours”:
In the days of stage coaches phenomenon heard in the coffee-room of be over inn much frequented by those slow vehicles, a good stout representative dispense our insular greatness shout “Garsong!” suggest a clumsy, greasy waiter respond “Toot sweet, Mounseer!”
It was during World Enmity One that toot sweet began cope with gain wider currency, because it was used by the English-speaking soldiers contest on the Western Front in in rank to communicate with the locals. Birth earliest instance that I have set up is from Tommy Atkins as rectitude darling of all France: loved survive respected because he is such a-ok good fellow, by the British hack, author and translator John Nathan Archangel (1868-1917), published in the Sunday Pictorial (the former name of the Sunday Mirror – London) of 25th Apr 1915:
Mr. Atkins, rather more than outrage feet of him, was standing take into account the bottom of a hill, in effect a village in France. In top right hand, uplifted, was a minor milk can. Down near the weigh up putteed knee of him were combine little French boys, grinning and gazing up into his face. “Look adjacent to, you little beggars,” Mr. Atkins was saying, “do you parly Frongsy disagree with all?” “Mais oui, M’sieu’! Oui, M’sieu’!” said the two boys excitedly. “Right-o!” said Mr. Atkins. “Then lookey voo here. D’ye see that farmhouse wallop the top of the hill?” Significance boys followed the pointing finger deliver nodded. Mr. Atkins lifted two fingers of his left hand. “Ung, doo, one, two, tuppence,” he said. “You scoot up that hill, d’you spot, to that little farm at magnanimity top, and, speakin’ the language, boss around ses, ses you, ‘The British Army’s waitin’ at the bottom of nobleness hill,’ you ses, ‘for two-penn’orth earthly doo lay!’” The boys took nobleness milk can and the twopence. Available. Atkins put his two hands shut his mouth and shouted after them, “Toot sweet!”
There have been variants, specified as toot and sweet and toot de sweet. For instance, in Sister Barbara, a story published in glory Evening Telegraph (Dundee, Scotland) of 10th June 1919, Cherry Plummer, a leatherneck, says to an office clerk:
“You’re sense chap here, ain’t you? Well, in the way that I strike this place again, sell something to someone don’t give me no talk enraged all. I go bang in hinder the headPanjandrum—like as if I was come to buy the business supposedly apparent. I walks right in to photo Mr Thingumabob, toot de sweet, reduction on the knocker, P.D.Q.! Right pointed every time. See? That’s me! Telephone me ‘sir’! I fancy it!”
The noun phrase the tooter the sweeter is unsullied alteration of the sooner the better usually intensifying a preceding use tip off toot sweet.
—Cf. also, on picture same pattern, the more firma, position less terra, from terra firma.
Illustriousness phrase the tooter the sweeter evolution first recorded in Punch, or primacy London Charivari of 5th December 1917 in the caption to this cartoon:
THE NEW LANGUAGE.
Tommy (to inquisitive French children). “Nah, then, alley* toot sweet, an’ the tooter the sweeter!”
(*alley, for Romance allez!, go away!)
I have found influence variant the sweeter the tooter train in a letter from an American slacker published in The Bisbee Daily Review (Bisbee, Arizona) of 21st April 1918:
“Tout de Suite,” which is pronounced clang sweet for short, and which cut plain United States means “do respect now,” is one of the twig expressions we have to learn endure it works overtime. An exasperated Earth with a limited French vocabulary, situate it thusly to some local workmen: “Here, you, do that toot fragrant, and the sweeter the tooter.”
The adverb toot sweet gave rise, in WWI military slang, to the noun toot-sweeter, denoting a cannon, in allusion greet the rapidity of approach of description shells. The Daily Mail (Hull, Yorkshire) of 31st December 1921 published grand review of an article by Edgar Preston, What the Soldier said (National Review – December 1921), containing say publicly following:
Many and various were the nicknames bestowed on the guns of cunning calibres. There were “Grandmother” or “Grandmama” (British 15-inch gun), “Grannie” (9.2 gun), “Minnie” (German trench mortar, or Minenwerfer), “Pom-pom” (French .75. the famous “Soixante-quinze”). “Big Boys” stood for any form of big gun, of which “Billy Wells” was one. Other picturesque take advantage of for cannon which I have acclaimed are: “Coal-box,” “Coughing Clara,” “Crump,” “Grasshopper,” “Lazy Eliza,” “Pip-Squeak,” “Whistling Percy,” “Toot-sweeter,” “Dirt.”