I just got home from a party, and I was checking my gmail, and one of the sidebar ads mentioned “spinning top”. Being a wee bit obsessive, I was thinking combed fiber until I saw the word Hannukah and realized they meant dreidels. Anyone know why “top”, though?
December 14, 2008
an ent knits 
December 16, 2008 at 4:45
The first definition of “top” in the O.E.D. is a crest or tuft of hair, from old Norse or old German, around 1205 AD. That’s pretty impressive considering the full definition of the word takes up five three-column pages! Originally it seems to have referred to what we now call a topknot, but it also referred to any kind of fiber tuft put on a distaff for spinning, not just wool.
January 12, 2009 at 16:07
I am thoroughly convinced a toy top is called a top because it’s a broken-off spindle whorl. Whorls and loom weights are very common in archaeological digs the world over, and I’m guessing lots of kids played with broken spindles whenever they had the chance.