toff [M19th] This is perhaps an alteration of tuft (an LME word borrowed from French tofe, otherwise of unknown origin), once a term for titled undergraduates at Oxford and Cambridge, who wore a gold tassel on their caps—social climbers and toadies were called tuft-hunters from the mid 18th century. The associations of the word may have influenced toffee-nosed [E20th] or ‘snobbish’, which was originally military slang. Toffee [E19th] seems to have been a desirable commodity to soldiers during the First World War—not be able to do something for toffee, or be totally incompetent at it, is first recorded in 1914 in the mouth of a British ‘Tommy’.