You may have heard that the few hundred year old definition of “tip”, as referring to gratuity, comes from “To Insure Promptness” or similar backronyms, but this isn’t correct.
In fact, pretty much anytime you’ve ever heard of a word that originated before the 20th century coming from an acronym, you can be almost certain that it isn’t true. As linguist David Wilton said,
There is only one known pre-20th-century [English] word with an acronymic origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886. The word is “colinderies” or “colinda”, an acronym for the Colonial and Indian Exposition held in London in that year.
The real origin of the word “tip” is a bit more obscure than that. In terms of the “gratuity” definition, it most likely comes from a popular form of speech among thieves, beggars, and hustlers, called the “Thieves’ Cant” (also sometimes called “Rogues’ Cant”), which arose in Great Britain several hundred years ago with the primary aim of keeping non-thieves and the like from being able to fully understand what the thieves were talking about.
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