The word "tosspots" appears in relation to drunkenness in the song which closes Shakespeare's Twelfth Night.
[3] The morality play Like Will to Like, by Shakespeare's contemporary Ulpian Fulwell, contains a character named Tom Tosspot, who remarks that If any poore man have in a whole week earned a grote, He shal spend it in one houre in tossing the pot.
In the chapter "Step Eight" of the Alcoholics Anonymous book Twelve Steps and Twelve Traditions by Bill Wilson, the phrase "... tosspot call[ing] a kettle black" causes some confusion for readers who are not familiar with the adage.
Wilson's pun places the tosspot, or the drunk, in the position of the flawed individual who should not criticize others.
[7] The word is also found in the Roman Catholic Knox Bible, in translating Proverbs 23:30: "Who but the tosspot that sits long over his wine?