Near the city of Preston, located in England’s county of Lancashire, this solemn epitaph is carved upon a grey and mossy tombstone: “Beneath this stone are deposited the remains of Richard Turner, author of the word teetotal as applied to abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, who departed this life on the 27th day of October, 1846, aged 56 years.” Turner is surely the only person in history whose headstone lays claim to having invented a word. The claim goes back to 1833, when Turner attended a local temperance meeting where he forswore his carousing lifestyle and instead endorsed what he called “teetotal” abstinence; in other words, unlike moderate reformers who spurned distilled spirits but permitted wines and ciders, Turner proclaimed that all forms of alcohol were verboten. How Turner came up with the word tee-total is something of a mystery. Some have claimed, not very convincingly, that he simply stuttered. Others have suggested that he was just putting a verbal capital on the word total, similar to how my mother used to say to me, “Mister, you’re in trouble with a capital T!” Still others have suggested that Turner was simply using an archaic word that already existed in his Lancashire dialect. In any event, the notion that Turner invented the word rapidly gained popularity. The April 1836 issue of the Preston Temperance Advocate even included a full-page portrait of “Dicky Turner,” and said that he was “celebrated” as the originator of the term.<\/p>\n
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Near the city of Preston, located in England’s county of Lancashire, this solemn epitaph is carved upon a grey and mossy tombstone: “Beneath this stone are deposited the remains of Richard Turner, author of the word teetotal as applied to abstinence from all intoxicating liquors, who departed this life on the 27th day of October, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-41240","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-t"],"yoast_head":"\n