Origins of the toe-rag

‘I am glad to say that I have never seen a toe-rag,’ said my husband, assuming, as unconvincingly as one would expect, the demeanour of Gwendolen from The Importance of Being Earnest. ‘It is obvious that our social spheres have been widely different.’

I had been mentioning the perverse tendency of the human race to defend their own amateur etymological theories, even when convicted of gross error.