"Topsy" meaning in English

See Topsy in All languages combined, or Wiktionary

Noun

IPA: /ˈtɒpsi/ [UK]
Etymology: After a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), who, asked about God, says "I s'pect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me." The sense of excessive out-of-control growth is a misunderstanding. Head templates: {{en-noun|?}} Topsy
  1. Something or someone who figuratively grows without control or intention. Wikipedia link: Uncle Tom's Cabin Related terms: topsy-turvy

Download JSON data for Topsy meaning in English (2.4kB)

{
  "etymology_text": "After a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), who, asked about God, says \"I s'pect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me.\" The sense of excessive out-of-control growth is a misunderstanding.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "Topsy",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with incorrect language header",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with incorrect language header",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        },
        {
          "kind": "other",
          "name": "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
          "parents": [
            "Entries with language name categories using raw markup",
            "Entry maintenance"
          ],
          "source": "w"
        }
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1945, Vannevar Bush, As We May Think",
          "text": "They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and has little consistency […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1973, J Ryder, Trevayne",
          "text": "Are you implying that it just grew—a Topsy?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1996, John H. Macdonald, The free world, page 25",
          "text": "The town grows like Topsy after the railway age begins. The fortifications are now quite useless since the city has outgrown them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 171",
          "text": "Topsy-like, the Encyclopédie just grew and grew.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Jock Lauterer, Community journalism: relentlessly local",
          "text": "The paper grew like Topsy. Within two years, we rented the place next door, knocked a door through the brick wall, redid the front to look like a real newspaper office instead of a bunch of fly-by-nighters […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Children, Schools and Families Committee, National curriculum: Oral and written evidence (page 232)",
          "text": "Why has National Strategies been allowed to grow like Topsy in some respects, and at the same time become even more complex, making it difficult for teachers to take in the amount of guidance that they receive?"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something or someone who figuratively grows without control or intention."
      ],
      "id": "en-Topsy-en-noun-mAtr~9jT",
      "links": [
        [
          "grow",
          "grow"
        ]
      ],
      "related": [
        {
          "word": "topsy-turvy"
        }
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈtɒpsi/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Topsy"
}
{
  "etymology_text": "After a character in Harriet Beecher Stowe's novel Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), who, asked about God, says \"I s'pect I growed. Don't think nobody never made me.\" The sense of excessive out-of-control growth is a misunderstanding.",
  "head_templates": [
    {
      "args": {
        "1": "?"
      },
      "expansion": "Topsy",
      "name": "en-noun"
    }
  ],
  "lang": "English",
  "lang_code": "en",
  "pos": "noun",
  "related": [
    {
      "word": "topsy-turvy"
    }
  ],
  "senses": [
    {
      "categories": [
        "English 2-syllable words",
        "English countable nouns",
        "English entries with incorrect language header",
        "English entries with language name categories using raw markup",
        "English eponyms",
        "English lemmas",
        "English nouns",
        "English nouns with unknown or uncertain plurals",
        "English terms with IPA pronunciation",
        "English terms with quotations",
        "Quotation templates to be cleaned"
      ],
      "examples": [
        {
          "ref": "1945, Vannevar Bush, As We May Think",
          "text": "They employ a symbolism which grew like Topsy and has little consistency […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1973, J Ryder, Trevayne",
          "text": "Are you implying that it just grew—a Topsy?",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "1996, John H. Macdonald, The free world, page 25",
          "text": "The town grows like Topsy after the railway age begins. The fortifications are now quite useless since the city has outgrown them.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2002, Colin Jones, The Great Nation, Penguin, published 2003, page 171",
          "text": "Topsy-like, the Encyclopédie just grew and grew.",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2006, Jock Lauterer, Community journalism: relentlessly local",
          "text": "The paper grew like Topsy. Within two years, we rented the place next door, knocked a door through the brick wall, redid the front to look like a real newspaper office instead of a bunch of fly-by-nighters […]",
          "type": "quotation"
        },
        {
          "ref": "2009, Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Children, Schools and Families Committee, National curriculum: Oral and written evidence (page 232)",
          "text": "Why has National Strategies been allowed to grow like Topsy in some respects, and at the same time become even more complex, making it difficult for teachers to take in the amount of guidance that they receive?"
        }
      ],
      "glosses": [
        "Something or someone who figuratively grows without control or intention."
      ],
      "links": [
        [
          "grow",
          "grow"
        ]
      ],
      "wikipedia": [
        "Uncle Tom's Cabin"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "sounds": [
    {
      "ipa": "/ˈtɒpsi/",
      "tags": [
        "UK"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "word": "Topsy"
}

This page is a part of the kaikki.org machine-readable English dictionary. This dictionary is based on structured data extracted on 2024-06-23 from the enwiktionary dump dated 2024-06-20 using wiktextract (1b9bfc5 and 0136956). The data shown on this site has been post-processed and various details (e.g., extra categories) removed, some information disambiguated, and additional data merged from other sources. See the raw data download page for the unprocessed wiktextract data.

If you use this data in academic research, please cite Tatu Ylonen: Wiktextract: Wiktionary as Machine-Readable Structured Data, Proceedings of the 13th Conference on Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC), pp. 1317-1325, Marseille, 20-25 June 2022. Linking to the relevant page(s) under https://kaikki.org would also be greatly appreciated.