Tout

Tout has two homographs.

• The traditional English word, dating as a verb from the fifteenth century and as a noun from the eighteenth, is pronounced like 'out': 'towt', IPA: /taʊt/. Its central meaning is of a disreputable occupation.
  • OED (2020) first records the verb as meaning "To peep, peer, look out; to gaze". From that, it came to be an underworld term ("thieves' cant") for 'to be on the look-out;', 'to watch [for]'. This developed into 'to watch' or 'to spy on'.
    • Specifically, this was used for 'to watch, or spy on, racehorses [and their stables, etc.]'; to gain illicit information for betting'. Touts often sold this information at and around racecourses.
  • Their habit of praising a given horse exravagantly may lie behind the meaning 'to praise excessively', 'to promote', 'recommend' or 'talk up' iin commercial contexts other than racing (Merriam-Webster, 2020).
  • From selling information, touts sometimes tout for custom, that is importune or solicit (often in a disreputable way, for customers. In the New World, this can extend to soliciting votes in an election.
  • A ticket tout (in informal American English, a 'scalper') is someone who attempts to resell tickets, often illicitly acquired, for prices higher than those printed on them.
• The second tout is a French word acclimatized into English, in phrases with another French word. It is pronounced in the French way, 'too', IPA: /tuː/, and with the final '-t' realized before a vowel, as in tout ensemble, /tuːt ɒn ˈsɒm blə (or, more anglicized, b^əl). The feminine form is written toute /tuːt /, with a plural toutes /tuːt/; the masculine and common plural is tous /tuː/. The basic meaning of all these forms is 'all', or 'every'; as an adverb, it can be a form of emphatic intensifier, 'very' or 'completely'. Some phrases are idiomatic in academic English, such as tout court, tout simple, tout à coup, en tout cas, tout compris, tout le monde, tout de suite and le tout (Paris).