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Definition 2024

tosheroon ‎(plural tosheroons)

(Britain, archaic slang) A half-crown coin; its value
1933, George Orwell, Down and Out in Paris and London, xxix
‘’Ere y’are, the best rig-out you ever ’ad. A tosheroon [half a crown] for the coat, two ’ogs for the trousers, one and a tanner for the boots, and a ’og for the cap and scarf. That’s seven bob.’
- 1961, Eric Partridge, The Routledge Dictionary of Historical Slang
  tush or tosh. Money: Cockney: late C.19–20. Ex: tusheroon... But H. errs, I believe: he should mean half-a-crown, for tusheroon and its C.20 variant tossaroon (2s. 6d.) are manifest corruptions of Lingua Franca MADZA CAROON.
(Britain, obsolete slang) A crown coin; its value
- 1859, J.C. Hotten, A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words
  Half-a-crown is known as an alderman, half a bull, half a tusheroon, and a madza caroon; whilst a crown piece, or five shillings, may be called either a bull, or a caroon, or a cartwheel, or a coachwheel, or a thick-un, or a tusheroon.
- 1912, J.W. Horsley, I Remember, xii. 253
  ‘Tush’, for money, would be an abbreviation of ‘tusheroon’, which in old cant, and also in tinker dialect, signified a crown.

From 19th-century British slang, developed from or alongside tusheroon, of uncertain derivation from British slang caroon ‎(“crown, a 5-shilling silver coin”), from Sabir and (originally) Italian corona ‎(“crown”). The term was either derived from or influenced by madza caroon, the British slang for the Sabir and Italian mezzo corona ‎(“half-crown”), possibly under influence from tosh ("copper items; valuables") above or from the half-crown's value of two shillings, sixpence.