Other forms: tossed, tossing, tosses
To toss something is to throw it lightly, with a flick rather than an aim. Keys tossed onto the hall table, a ball tossed to a dog, a coin tossed to decide who goes first.
In the kitchen it means turning food over and over so everything gets coated: toss the salad in the dressing, toss the pasta with butter, toss a pancake and catch it flat. A rough sea tosses a small boat about, and anyone who cannot sleep tosses and turns all night. The noun is mostly the coin one — win the toss, lose the toss, and in cricket the captains toss before play. Toss out means throw away, and it also means throwing an idea into a conversation to see what happens to it. One warning for Britain: 'I couldn't give a toss' is rude, so leave that one alone.
1verbtossTo throw something lightly or carelessly.
“He tossed his jacket onto the back of the chair.”
Patterntoss sth to sb · toss sth in / into / onto + place · toss a coin · toss sth away / aside
2verbmixTo mix food by turning it over gently so that all of it is coated.
“Toss the leaves with a little oil and lemon.”
3verbairTo throw a coin in the air to settle something by chance.
“The captains tossed for the right to start.”
4verbmoveTo move something up and down or from side to side with force.
“The waves tossed the little boat for an hour.”
5noundecideThe throwing of a coin to decide something.
“We lost the toss and had to bat first.”
Too few real examples of this word to estimate which sense is commonest.
Also accepted in games: flip
TOSS → heads or tails?
Heads or tails? Throw it up lightly with your thumb, catch it, and look.
Toss has been in English since Middle English, where tossen meant to buffet about or agitate — and also to sift or winnow grain, shaking it so the chaff blew off. Where it came from before that nobody knows; Old Norse and an older Middle English word meaning to pull apart have both been suggested and neither settled. The winnowing still sits inside the modern word: what you toss, you shake and turn.
Middle English
tossen — to buffet about, agitate, toss; to sift or winnow
English, today
toss
From Middle English tossen (“to buffet about, agitate, toss; to sift or winnow”), of unknown origin. Perhaps from Old Norse - (compare dialectal Norwegian tossa, dialectal Swedish tossa (“to strew, spread”)), or perhaps from an alteration of Middle English tosen (“to tease, pull apart, shred; to wound, injure”). Compare also Dutch tassen (“to pile or heap up, stack”). The Welsh tos (“a quick jerk”) and tosio (“to jerk, toss”) are probably borrowed from the English.
Etymology from Wiktionary, CC BY-SA