Green’s Dictionary of Slang

tony n.¹

a fool.

1672		J. Phillips Maronides (1678) VI 69: For make but an old Bawd your Crony, / You’l make the Devil a meer Tony.
1678		Dryden All for Love Prologue: In short, a pattern, and companion fit, For all the keeping Tonies of the pit.
c.1698		B.E. Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: Tony, a silly Fellow, or Ninny.
1701		N. Ward ‘A Walk to Islington’ Writings (1704) 75: You think, I believe, that my things cost no Money, / I wonder you’d do so, you great silly Tony.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy I 157: I’m poor Girl such a Toney. [Ibid.] V 57: The Major wisely would not stand, / Nor on his Pistols clap a Hand, / He was not such a Fighting Tony.
1728		Vanbrugh & Cibber Provoked Husband II i: Pooh! you silly Tony!
1737, 1759, 1760, 1776		Bailey Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698].
1741		Sexes Mis-Match’d 195: You unmannerly Tony, you Wittol Looby.
1777		Hants. Chron. 27 Oct. 4/1: This Master Stephen here, a simple tony, / May soon become a pigeon Macarony.
1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Tony. A silly fellow, or ninny. A mere tony: a simpleton.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1785].
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1841		‘The Batch Of Cakes’ Dublin Comic Songster 44: The bucks that range about so smart, drest up like simple tonies, / Why, lauk, they are no cakes at all, they’re only macaronies.
1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1899		Cornishman 27 July 6/2: Tony [is] synonyous, in the language of the canting crew, for fool.
1962		F. Norman Guntz 217: They are not even people, they are nothing but tonys.