OED says Toots is probably from the earlier "meaningless alliteration" Tootsy-wootsy used as a term of endearment (or just to refer to a woman or sweetheart in general).
What is the origin of the term "toots" to refer to a woman?
I was just sitting thinking I had cold tootsies meaning my toes or feet! This got me wondering, where on earth does the word tootsie/tootsy come from? I did Google this and got definitions (appare...
meaning - Origin of "tootsie" or "tootsy" (foot) - English Language ...
The plural of foot is feet but the plurals of root, boot, and toot are roots, boots, and toots. I have ascertained from my research that whenever an oo word changes its plural form to ee, that word traces to West Germanic. The counterexamples come from different languages. Questions How did these irregular nouns come to be?
A shortened form of the hypocoristic dim. suffix -sy suffix, added to the same classes of words, as Babs, Toots; ducks (see duck n.1 3c), moms. I wasn't familiar with the referenced singular use of moms, but the OED entry for that word provides some examples that are similar to the use of pops: In quot. 1976, addressed ironically to a man.
Fans of Dickens's Dombey and Son (1846–1848) may recall a character whose role in the book is to teach Mr. Toots (an amiable but rather gullible young gentleman) various manly arts—a character identified only as "the Game Chicken."
In this delicious abode [his "choice set of apartments"], Mr. Toots devoted himself to the cultivation of those gentle [sporting] arts which refine and humanise existence, his chief instructor in which was an interesting character called the Game Chicken, who was always to be heard of at the bar of the Black Badger, wore a shaggy white great ...