File under “Play Taps for Tips”: Tip is not an acronym.
Supposedly, goes the canard, tip is an acronym of “To Insure Promptness.” Not true. To tip, in thieves’ slang in use by the early 1600s, was “to give or pass on” (think “tip on a horse race”). Noun use of tip was established by the mid-iyoos. Our phrase “tip off,” meaning “warn or signal,” is an offshoot of this use. (As an aside, the level of irony of “tipping” coming from thieves’ slang depends on just how bad the restaurant service was that day.)
William and Mary Morris once noted that “More probably tip is a corruption of stipend, ‘a small payment of money,’ from the Latin word stips, meaning ‘gift.’” Intriguing speculation, though tip at three letters is nearly 43 percent of stipend, and in the world of tipping, 43 percent seems awfully generous.
The timetable of supposed creation of tip as an acronym places it in violation of the rules of Specious Histories & Ignorant Twaddle (see the blush-making entry on page 54). And so it is with a variant explanation, that tips resulted from “To Insure Prompt Service.” If we are to give that word any acronymic origins, I’d prefer “To Insure Perpetuation of . . . well, of what Specious Histories & Ignorant Twaddle spells out.”
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Bill Brohaugh