Toby jug
/ˈtəʊbi dʒʌɡ
/noun chiefly British
A beer jug or mug in the form of a stout old man wearing a three-cornered hat.Too much Affordably Good Design made me want to go straight to a novelty shop in Devizes to buy a toby jug of a grinning trawlerman's head sporting a yellow sou'wester....
- For them, he was just an honoured toby jug, like Sun Yat Sen.
- Jonathon Horne, a ceramics specialist, said: ‘You will pay between £700 and £1, 500 for a nice 18th century toby jug now.'
Origin
Mid 19th century: pet form of the given name Tobias, and said to come from an 18th-century poem about Toby Philpot (with a pun on fill pot), a soldier who liked to drink.