[Ads-l] a sense of "toddy" not in the OED

[George Thompson]

Everything under "toddy" in the OED relates either to the sap of an Asian
plant, a drink made from it, or the implements used to make and serve the
drink.

>From Moore's Rural New-Yorker, March 6, 1851
Fraud in Cloth. -- Thompson's N. Y. Commercial Reporter has the following:
A great demand has risen for rag wool. . . .  The wool is obtained from
taking old made-up clothing and reducing it to a state of wool, which
manufacturers buy to mix with new wool, so as to reduce the cost of cloths,
but at the expense of its strength.  The appearance of the cloth so made is
equally good with that made entirely from new wool.  The rag wool is
technically called "toddy."

I see that the Commercial Reporter dead-heats with the OED's earliest
citation for "rag wool".  It has "shoddy" from the early/mid 1830s.

rag wool  n. wool obtained by tearing rags into shreds; coarse woollen yarn
made from this; cf. shoddyn. 1a
<https://www-oed-com.proxy.library.nyu.edu/view/Entry/178430#eid22957748>.
1851    Democratic State Reg. (Watertown, Wisconsin) 15 Apr. 1/7   A great
demand has arisen for rag wool.
1902    Jrnl. Royal Statist. Soc. *65* 121   Cotton, wool, worsted, rag-wool,
silk are worked together in various combinations.
2006    Bangor (Maine) Daily News (Nexis) 2 Mar.  c1   Such shoes, made from
 rag wool, have been worn for decades in Eastern Europe and Russia.

GAT

-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern
Univ. Pr., 1998.

But when aroused at the Trump of Doom / Ye shall start, bold kings, from
your lowly tomb. . .
L. H. Sigourney, "Burial of Mazeen", Poems.  Boston, 1827, p. 112

The Trump of Doom -- also known as The Dunghill Toadstool.  (Here's a
picture of his great-grandfather.)
http://www.parliament.uk/worksofart/artwork/james-gillray/an-excrescence---a-fungus-alias-a-toadstool-upon-a-dunghill/3851

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