Can anyone suggest a definitive answer for the origin of the word "teetotal" (teetotaler, teetotalism etc.)?
The Wikipedia entry lists a few suggestions but I'm not sure which one to believe.
Online Etymology Dictionary gives the following, but (like Wikipedia) does not give evidence for a definite origin:
teetotal (v.)
"pledged to total abstinence from intoxicating drink," 1834, possibly formed from total (adj.) with a reduplication of the initial T- for emphasis (T-totally "totally," though not in an abstinence sense, is recorded in Kentucky dialect from 1832 and is possibly older in Irish-English).The use in temperance jargon was first noted September 1833 in a speech advocating total abstinence (from beer as well as wine and liquor) by Richard "Dicky" Turner, a working-man from Preston, England. Also said to have been introduced in 1827 in a New York temperance society which recorded a T after the signature of those who had pledged total abstinence, but contemporary evidence for this is wanting, and while Century Dictionary allows that "the word may have originated independently in the two countries," OED favors the British origin and ones that Webster (1847) calls teetotaler "a cant word formed in England."
Best Answer
The OED Online entry ("not yet fully updated...first published 1911") for "teetotal, adj. and n." provides a lengthy etymological note. Some points made in that note remain good; other points can be contradicted with evidence now available from online reproductions of historical newspapers and journals.
That 'teetotal' is formed as an "emphasizing reduplication" remains true. That "it was first used (in sense A. 1)...by a working man etc.", while it may not be true, was not contradicted by any of the contemporary evidence I examined.
The evidence I examined did strongly suggest that "Turner only used a word colloquially current in Lancashire", notwithstanding that attestation of tee-total in EDD is all from later than 1833. Even supposing it is not agreed that the now-contemporary evidence (presented next) strongly suggests "Turner only used a word colloquially current", the evidence now flatly contradicts what was undoubtedly true when published, that "the whole tenor of contemporary evidence is opposed" to the notion that Turner used a current colloquialism.
The evidence suggesting that Turner used a current colloquialism includes uses of 'tee-totally' in newspapers (behind paywall) from Cheshire, England (1810), and Waterford (1828), Dublin, Limerick, Newry and Cork, Ireland (1832), as well as use of 'tee-total' in a newsletter from Dublin (1832):
It is evident from these uses that 'tee-total' and 'tee-totally' were colloquialisms in relatively common use, especially among the Irish, from 1810-1832. 'Tee-totally' particularly was likely to have been known to Turner before his September 1833 speech, as a result of the word having been widely disseminated in the article detailing the proceedings of the Irish Trades' Political Union, 25 Nov 1832, a scant ten months earlier.
Note that OED attests 'tee-total' in the dialectal sense of "absolute, complete, perfect, entire" (A. 2) from 1840. The early use shown in the foregoing was not known to the OED lexicographers in 1911. 'Tee-totally' in the sense of "Totally, entirely, wholly" is attested from 1832 in OED, but in the US, as this from the lengthy 'tee-total' etymological note observes:
As shown by the clippings above, there is now proof that 'tee-totally' was used in Cheshire, England, as early as 1810. Preston, Turner's hometown in Lancashire, is a mere 44 m. (72 km) from Cheshire.