topping adj.
excellent, enjoyable, first-rate.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Five Hundred Pointes of Good Husbandrie (1878) 107: A lesson for dairie maid Cisley, of ten topping gests. | |
| Sir Martin Mar-all V i: A rare topping Health this: Come, Sir John, now you and I will be in our Altitudes. | |
| ‘Satire on Benting’ in Court Satires of the Restoration (1976) 218: Benting, that topping favorite at Court. | |
| London Spy I 6: He [...] is mighty great with most of the Bankers and topping Goldsmiths about Town. | |
| Humours of a Coffee-House 21 Nov. 60: This very Barbarian of a Brother is now become a Topping City Gentleman. | |
| York Spy 27: Another Sister, an Admirer of a Red Coat in Portugal, a topping Jade, sail’d out of the Tenement. | |
| Artifice Act IV: He keeps a topping House – He has humming March Beer, and deadly strong Cyder. | |
| Narrative of Street-Robberies 39: Those which are call’d the topping Beauties of the Place, have no occasion for Men of his Occupation. | |
| Hist. of Highwaymen &c. 188: The Taylor imagines he has got an excellent Job, as well as a topping Woman for his Lodger. | |
| ‘The Cullies Invitation’ in Hop Garland 6: Nancy, Kate, and Nell, / dress up Brisk and Topping. | |
| Discoveries (1774) 33: The Masoner then goes out, that they may have an Opportunity of telling the Farmer what a topping Dealer he is. | |
| Chrysal I xiii: Jack Twist the rope-maker, who is now the toppingest man in all Radcliffe-highway. | |
| Adventures of a Speculist I 7: That man was a topping jeweller once. | |
| ‘Meg of Wapping’ Jovial Songster 69: She’d shine at the play, and she’d jig at the ball, / All rigg’d out so gay and so topping. | |
| ‘Jenny Whinney’ Poetical Works 147: He is a true North Briton, / Sprung from a topping clan. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Standard (London) 20 Oct. 1/2: He was a topping person in his way. | |
| Bk of Sports 85: The above Club [...] was well attended once-a-week by the ‘topping’ tradesmen of the town. | |
| Frank Fairlegh (1878) 142: Even after all the ground she’s been over to-night, going a topping pace the whole time too, she wasn’t a bit off her feed. | |
| Gaslight and Daylight 141: That topping wine-merchant who ‘in London did well.’. | |
 | Bothie and Other Poems (1896) 4: Shady in Latin, said Lindsay, but topping in Plays and Aldrich. | |
| Under the Greenwood Tree II 136: I dont like her to come by herself, now she’s not so topping in health. | |
| (con. 1715) Chronicles of Newgate 130: Most of them have very great estates, and are topping gentry. | |
| ‘’Arry in Switzerland’ Punch 5 Dec. in (2006) 97: I’d got hup on the toppingest scale. | |
| ‘Buster Brown’ [comic strip] Tige [...] says he thinks London is perfectly topping. | |
| Madcap of the School 11: ‘Yes, it’s topping! Regular old country mansion sort of a place’. | |
| Mufti 24: The League of Nations; or the triumph of Democracy, or the War to end War. They all sound so topping, don’t they? | |
| Inimitable Jeeves 21: The weather continued topping to a degree. | |
| Vile Bodies 133: That’s what I like about a really decent party – you meet such topping fellows. | |
| Diaries (1999) 4 Aug. 26: Examined the vegetable plot and the Hans Anderson Shelter. Really topping. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Courier-Mail (Brisbane) 21 Sept. 4/6: ‘Topping,’ ‘spiffing,’ and ‘ripping’ seem to have died with bob Cherry and Tom Merry. | |
| Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 181: Lord Russell of Liverpool (Daily Telegraph, 2 July 1953) justly remarked: ‘In my schooldays it was ‘topping’ and ‘ripping.’. | |
| Beano 27 Dec. 1: A topping Christmas to one and all. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Da (1981) Act I: He’s starting work. Oh, a toppin’ job: running an office. | |
| Out After Dark 112: We were great, he said. Oh, topping; grand, A.1. | |
| (con. 1910s) Silvertown 32: The yellow-haired girl follows them [...] singing in a jangly voice: Poplar is popular but Wapping is topping. |
In compounds
1. (Aus.) a senior figure, a leader (of a gang).
| ‘Lela’ in Maitland Mercury (NSW, Aus.) 31 Mar. 2: The captain, or topping cove, had retrieved his large slouch hat . | |
| Dly Dispatch (Richmond, VA) 1 Nov. 3/3: A ‘topping cove’? [...] put him down as the chief of the party. | |
| Aus. Sl. Dict. 87: Topping Cove, [...] the head of a party. |
2. see also compounds under topping n.2
a superior, rich man.
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn). | |
| Lex. Balatronicum. |