Talk:toey

Reorder
Re-ordered: OED only has the Australian slang meaning, and that's the context that I mainly hear it in.

Surprisingly, the Macquarie Slang Dictionary (I have the 2002 reprint of the 2000 revised edition, ISBN 1 876429 18 6 doesn't include anything of a sexual nature in their entry for this word though it is certainly not a bowlderized dictionary.

They have:

toey adj. 1. anxious; apprehensive; edgy. 2. keen, ready to go. 3. (of a horse) having an excitable temperament; fast. -phr. 4. toey as a Roman sandal, extremely anxious.

When I first starting hearing this word maybe a decade ago I couldn't make out on my own just from context what it meant. But I had the same problem years before when I first travelled to the US and heard antsy.

To me I would say the MSD sense 1 fits perfectly with how I now understand this word except they neglect to mention that it very often has specifically sexual overtones, depending on the context of course.

It differs from horny which is used positively to mean turned on, aroused, whereas toey is used negatively to indicate that you're suffering from going too long without sex or that something is causing you to become aroused but you know you won't be sexually gratified.

I've never come across the horse racing sense but it seems to reveal the origin of the term. &mdash; hippietrail 02:02, 11 June 2009 (UTC)

Hello, in french
looks like the best equivalent'd be "être sur des charbons ardents" (to stand on red ambers)...While in spanish "cachondo" means both " horny", & "joker". Cultural difference...T.y. y un abrazo de Pascua Florida para "Rastro de Jipi" !... Arapaima 08:40, 5 April 2010 (UTC)

Horse context
I heard that one derivation of Toey was that when racehorses are in the starting gates and they are really anxious to start running, they "toe" the ground.

Mad Max (1979 movie)
In the first chase, a stolen police car of unsurpassed power is described as "very toey." In the version dubbed for Anglo America, all Australian slang is replaced by American: the car becomes "super hot."

RFV discussion: August 2011–February 2012
Rfv-sense: (Australia) lustful or sexually aroused.

Not in Macquarie's or OneLook references in this sense, except for Urban Dictionary. Could use citations, presumably from fiction or Groups. DCDuring TALK 11:37, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Widespread long-term use. I've heard it and used it for 40 years. It's well cited under the linked article on toey as a Roman sandal, but the word is used on its own also.--Dmol 23:27, 5 August 2011 (UTC)
 * I looked on Usenet and Google Books for "feeling toey", "felt toey", "was toey", but couldn't find quotations that were clearly using it to mean "sexually aroused" as opposed to generically "excited, anticipatory". Still, given the cites Dmol points out at toey as a Roman sandal, it seems quite plausible. - -sche (discuss) 01:05, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
 * It seems plausible to me too, but Macquarie's has 4 senses, according to Talk:toey, not including the one in question. I've seen usage that implies that someone can feel toey: as a result of being sexually frustrated. The cites at, to the extent that they are intelligible to me and durably attested, don't clearly exclude that interpretation. DCDuring TALK 03:09, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
 * Agreed. - -sche (discuss) 03:41, 6 August 2011 (UTC)
 * RFV-failed, although I've kept a "sometimes specifically..." suggestion of it in the first sense, per Dmol. - -sche (discuss) 05:14, 4 February 2012 (UTC)