In Victorian slang, a tiddlywink was an unlicensed or down-market pub. Aside from the fact that tiddly has been used as a euphemism for being drunk (and before that for an alcoholic drink itself) since the early nineteenth century, there’s little etymological evidence to go on here and the word’s precise origins remain a mystery.

One theory maintains that tiddly might have begun life as a jocular, deliberately childish pronunciation of “little”, which perhaps in combination with the old-fashioned use of wink to mean “a brief amount of time” or “a tiny amount” (as in “I haven’t slept a wink!”) might imply that the original tiddlywink was a quick tipple, or a mouthful of drink—or else somewhere where just such a restorative could be purchased.

That’s just a theory, of course, and with so little evidence to go on it’s impossible to decide whether there’s much truth to it. In fact, in a fine example of an etymological chicken-or-the-egg problem, it could be that tiddly derives from tiddlywink rather than the other way around, which would cast doubt on this entire idea. No matter where its origins might lie, however, by the mid 1850s tiddlywink was already being used as the name of a bar game—but even then, it wasn’t the game we know today.

Originally, tiddlywink was a variation of dominoes that, according to Routledge’s Every Boy’s Annual (1870), involved “four, six or eight players” who, unlike a normal game of dominoes, each have the right to a second go after they play a double; the game ends when “the one who first plays out all his dominoes calls ‘tidley-wink’”.

(via @HaggardHawks)