TOPSY

PRONUNCIATION: (TOP-see)

MEANING: noun: Something growing without intention or direction.

ETYMOLOGY: After Topsy, a young enslaved girl, in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s 1852 novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin. Earliest documented use: 1885.

NOTES: Topsy, a young girl, is purchased by the slaveholder Augustine and she becomes friends with his daughter Eva. When Eva asks Topsy who made her, she replies, “Nobody, as I knows on. I s’pect I growed. Don’t think nobody never made me.” The cute reply became popular in the English language to refer to an unplanned or an enormous growth.
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STOPSY - alternative name for the urban game "Red Light"

TOPS'L - just below the Crows' Nest

TOPHY - full of gouty lumps on fingers, hands, toes, and feet, and in the skin