Topsyn.
/ˈtɒpsi/, U.S. /ˈtɑpsi/ Used allusively as the type of something that seems to have grown of itself without anyone's intention or direction (see quot. 1851).
ΘΚΠ
the world > existence and causation > causation > chance or causelessness > [noun] > haphazardness or randomness > haphazard thing
Topsy1885
1851 H. B. Stowe Uncle Tom's Cabin in National Era 6 Nov. 1/5 Have you ever heard anything about God, Topsy?.. Do you know who made you?’ ‘Nobody, as I knows on,’ said the child... ‘I spect I grow'd. Don't think nobody never made me.’]
1885 R. Kipling Let. in Ld. Birkenhead Rudyard Kipling (1978) vi. 81 I have really embarked..on my novel Mother Maturin—Like Topsy ‘it growed’ while I wrote.
1936 C. Rouse Old Towns i. 17 The planning of towns in medieval England can be said to have followed no given rule—they were like Topsy who ‘just growed’.
1955 Times 30 Aug. 9/7 It may be that political parties must emulate Topsy and just grow.
1967 Boston Sunday Herald 9 Apr. 27/4 This practice [sc. bugging] has grown like Topsy.
1973 ‘J. Ryder’ Trevayne (1974) xxv. 201 Are you implying that it [sc. a business] just grew—a Topsy?
1982 Oxf. Times 30 Apr. 31/1 The garden, like Topsy, ‘just growed’.
This entry has not yet been fully updated (first published 1986; most recently modified version published online March 2022).
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n.1885