Stone the Crows: Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang [2 ed.] 0199543704, 9780199543700

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Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang

John Ayto and John Simpson

Drawing on the unique resources Oxford English Dictionary, Stone Crows features over 6,000 slang and expressions, from the British beer goggles, through the American cockamamie, to the Australian gigglehouse. This fascinating collection contains old favourites as well as the very latest slang terms. In addition to the A-Z entries, the book contains a comprehensive thematic index, details of origins, dates of first printed use, and thousands of illustrative quotations from famous names including John Lennon and Woody Allen. Lively and entertaining. Stone the Crows is sure to provide a stonking good read for all. Blue funk Bunny-boiler Cow-spanker Futz Happy as Larry Monkey-man Off one's rocker Q.B.I. Phoney baloney Shonky Safe Toad-stabber Trustafarian " Waffle stomper Wingding Zazzy

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Stov\^ tht Groves Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang

Second Edition John Ayto John Simpson

oxroRD UNIVERSITY PRESS

OXPORD UNIVERSITY PRESS

Great Clarendon Street, Oxford ox2

6DP

Oxford University Press is a department of the University of Oxford. It furthers the University’s objective of excellence in research, scholarship, and education by publishing worldwide in Oxford New York Auckland Cape Town Dar es Salaam Hong Kong Karachi Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Nairobi New Delhi Shangai Taipei Toronto With offices in Argentina Austria Brazil Chile Czech Republic France Greece Guatemala Hungary Italy Japan Poland Portugal Singapore South Korea Switzerland Thailand Turkey Ukraine Vietnam Oxford is a registered trade mark of Oxford University Press in the UK and in certain other countries Published in the United States by Oxford University Press Inc., New York © Oxford University Press 1992, 2005, 2008 The moral rights of the authors have been asserted Database right Oxford University Press (maker) First published 1992 First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback 1993 Reissued with new covers 1996 Reissued with new covers and new material 2005 This second edition published 2008 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior permission in writing of Oxford University Press, or as expressly permitted by law, or under terms agreed with the appropriate reprographics rights organization. Enquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the Rights Department, Oxford University Press, at the address above You must not circulate this book in any other binding or cover and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Data available Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data Data available Typeset by SPI Publisher Services, Pondicherry, India Printed in Great Britain on acid-free paper by Clays Ltd., St Ives pic ISBN 978-0-19-954370-0 1

Contents Preface to Second Edition Introduction to First Edition

Vll IX

Pronunciation symbols

Xll

Principal abbreviations

Xlll

Dictionary Thematic index The body and its functions People and society Animals Sustenance and intoxication Articles and substances Money, commerce, and employment Behaviour, attitudes, and emotions Thought and communication The arts, entertainment, and the media Time and tide Location and movement Abstract qualities and states

1 373

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Preface to Second Edition

A

year, to paraphrase Harold Wilson, is a long time in slang. Sixteen years have now passed since the publication of the first edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Modem Slang, and it is more than high time it was refreshed. Over that period, thousands of new slang words and expressions have flooded into the English language, most of them only to be flushed summarily away, but many tenacious enough to make at least some sort of semi-permanent impression on the language. It may seem to many that the late 20th and early 21st centuries have been a golden age for English slang, in variety, inventiveness, and not least quantity. That could well be the case (although as far as quantity is concerned, reliable statistics are hard to obtain in this field). If it is, to what can we attribute it? Numerous factors must play a part, among which the most salient are probably the much wider acceptance accorded nowadays to colloquial or informal language (of which slang forms a part) than was the case a quarter of a century ago, and the higher profile enjoyed by all facets of youth culture, from which a significant proportion of new slang emerges. The deconstruction of deferential hierarchies has had inevitable linguistic consequences; contexts in which Relatively formal language was once de rigueur now happily embrace colloquialism. Media outlets, broadcast and print, and other electronic communications both contribute to and promulgate the trend, which has headed firmly in the tabloid direction (it would once have been unthinkable, for instance, to hear gun down on a BBC news bulletin). Fear of fuddy-duddiness facilitates the spread of youth slang beyond its original enclaves. The most powerful driving force in this area over the past twenty years has been hip-hop culture. Originating among the African American and Hispanic populations of New York City in the late 1970s, and comprising elements such as rap music, graffiti art, and break-dancing, its vocabulary was not slow to cross the Atlantic, where it melded with Aifo-Caribbean and South African elements and items of existing British urban slang to form the new cool-speak. Probably its best-known 21st-century representative was bling-bling (or simply bling), which duly made the cross-over to general usage, but it had already been preceded there by many others, such as crew, phat, and tag. The perennial questions about what to include and what to leave out are always more acute in the case of slang, with its reputation for ephemerality (unless one is misguided enough to steer towards that lexicographic mirage, the comprehensive slang dictionaiy). In the present case the editors have adhered to the policy of the first edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Modem Slang, as set out in the Introduction: to cover slang of the 20th century which is included in the Oxford English Dictionary. Its publication followed closely on that of the second edition of the OED; this new edition takes the story forwards by including the slang items which appear in the ongoing online third edition of the OED. It also

Preface to Second Edition

Vlll

plugs a few gaps in the coverage of its original version, particularly from other, non-British varieties of English—most notably American and Australian. In all, around a thousand additional items—new words, and new meanings of existing words—have found their way into this edition, from ace boon coon to gay ‘foolish, lame’, from tombstoning to wag, from chuddies to knobhead. A feature included for the first time is a thematic index, which enables the user to track down slang expressions in a particular subject area, and also to gain an impression of those areas of human existence that are the most prolific engenderers of slang. As in the first edition, a date is given against each word and meaning included, representing the earliest written or printed example of it in the OED’s files. Thanks to the ongoing work of revising the OED, the editors have been able to antedate several items from the original edition (often by a considerable margin: for example, meat-head ‘stupid person’ from 1945 to 1863, and organ as a euphemism for ‘penis’ from 1903 to 1833). But there is still much evidence out there waiting to be uncovered, and as before, we would be delighted to hear from anyone who can provide a reliably dated earlier attestation for any item in the dictionary.

Introduction to First Edition

S

lang is a colourful, alternative vocabulary. It bristles with humour, vituperation, prejudice, informality: the slang of English is English with its sleeves rolled up, its shirt-tails dangling, and its shoes covered in mud. This dictionary presents a panoramic view of twentieth-century English slang—from Britain, North America, Australia, and elsewhere in the English-speaking world— from World War 1 until the present day. The Oxford English Dictionary identifies three types of slang. The first to which the term ‘slang’ was applied, in the mid-eighteenth century, was ‘the special vocabulary used by any set of persons of a low and disreputable character’, the thieves’ cant or patter of earlier centuries. This vein of slang thrives today in the vocabulary of the underworld, street gangs, drug-trafficking. But soon after the mid-eighteenth century, the meaning of ‘slang’ broadened to include ‘the special vocabulary or phraseology of a particular calling or profession’: printers’ slang, costermongers’ slang, even the slang vocabulary of doctors and lawyers. Both of these types of slang served many purposes, but the predominant one was as a private vocabulary binding together members of a subculture or social group, conferring upon them an individuality distinct from the rest of the community. Finally, in the early years of the nineteenth century, the term ‘slang’ came to be applied much more generally to any ‘language of a highly colloquial type, considered as below the level of standard educated speech, and consisting either of new words or of current words employed in some new special sense’. Today slang covers all three of these areas: not all colloquial or informal vocabulary is slang, but all slang is colloquial or informal. The Oxford Dictionary of Modem Slang contains the slang of the twentieth century which is included in the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary. Some minor terms have been omitted, when it was clear that they had not obtained a substantial foothold in the language. But in addition, a further five hundred or so slang words, or slang meanings of words, have been included which are currently in preparation for the OED but which have not yet been published there. The vocabulary of slang changes rapidly: what is new and exciting for one generation is old-fashioned for the next. Old slang often either drifts into obsolescence or becomes accepted into the standard language, losing its eccentric colour. Slang items from the nineteenth century and earlier that have remained in the nether regions of the English language to the present day are included in the dictionary, but those that have proved upwardly mobile— including ones which originated in the twentieth century—are not. Flapper, for instance, started life in the late nineteenth century as a slang term for a young unconventional or lively woman, but subsequently moved into the general language as a specific term for such a young woman of the 1920s, so it finds no

Introduction to First Edition

X

place in this book. Similarly, the use of gay in the sense ‘homosexual’ has its roots firmly in slang (of the 1930s), but is now widely accepted as standard terminology, so it too is not included. Many words take the opposite course: arse, for example, was the normal word for ‘buttocks’ in the Old and Middle English period; only thereafter did it begin to be perceived as ‘rude’, and to slip into that area of the language regarded as ‘slang’. The pace of change in the usage of slang is curious in its own right, and was an aspect which we wanted to highlight in this dictionary. As a result, each slang word or meaning is supplied with the date at which it is first recorded as entering the English language. In addition, multiple slang senses for any word are ordered chronologically in each entry, with the earliest first and the most recent last. These datings are taken in the main from the full OED, though occasionally earlier attestations are taken from other sources (notably the Australian National Dictionary and the Oxford English Dictionary department’s own unpublished files). These are predominantly based on printed sources, and it is commonly argued that slang vocabulary lives for many years an underground existence before it comes to be written down, and that therefore these earliest dates do not necessarily reflect the real picture. Other dictionaries—and in particular Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English—supply approximate dates at which a word or sense is thought to have come into use. Such a system is perfectly respectable, but suffers in turn from the charge of subjectivity: it is likely that some dates are too cautious and others too adventurous. In choosing to supply the earliest dates available to us from the printed record, we hope that the dictionary represents a checklist of what is actually known for certain about each slang term, and also that readers who come across earlier attestations—which do in many cases certainly exist—will alert us to them so that we will be able to correct this aspect of the heritage of English in subsequent editions. As well as this, we should be delighted to receive notification (particularly from published sources) of items which have not been included in the present edition, but which might merit inclusion at a later date. It should also be noted that in the case of words (like arse) which began life as standard terms but later came to be regarded as slang, we have generally given the date of the first recorded occurrence of the term in the relevant sense, regardless of its level of usage. On occasions, slang can be offensive, because it singles out a particular group of people in an insulting or condescending way, or because it breaks taboos about permissible objects of reference in everyday speech. The English language is not always politically correct. But it would have been improper to censor the contents of this dictionary on such grounds, and indeed the tradition of the lexicography of slang in English has required that such language be included. Prejudicial or coarse vocabulary has been labelled accordingly. Our view has been that however regrettable this aspect of English may be, its inclusion in a dictionary of slang does not sanction its use, but simply records the facts as far as they are available. Each entry in the dictionary consists at its barest of a headword, part of speech, definition, and period of usage. The great majority of the entries are also supplied with at least one illustrative example of the term in context, from a

XI

Introduction to First Edition

published source. These examples are not usually the first recorded use, but represent typical later examples from throughout the present century, and attempt to give some impression of the flavour of the word illustrated. These citations are normally extracted from the full Oxford English Dictionary, to which the reader is referred for more comprehensive bibliographical and other information. Occasionally citations are taken from other sources, most often from the files of the OED. Many entries also contain labels indicating the region, social group, or discipline within which a word is prevalent. It is therefore possible to trace a word’s development from, say, the slang of service personnel in World War I, through changes of meaning as it was taken up in North America or Australia, to a modem sense restricted to the vocabulary of a particular ‘calling or profession’. The genealogy of slang presented in this way often reveals a surprisingly tortuous and humorous or idiosyncratic development. Derivations or etymologies are not supplied when they are self-evident. On the other hand, popular misconceptions are typically alluded to, if only to be dismissed. Similarly, pronunciations are given (in the International Phonetic Alphabet) only in cases of ambiguity or other difficulty.

Pronunciation symbols Consonants b but d dog f few get g h he yes j k cat Vowels ae cat a: arm e bed 3: her I sit i: see

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my how day no hair

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near boy poor fire sour

(a) signifies the indeterminate sound as in garden, carnal, and rhythm. (r) at the end of a word indicates an r that is sounded when a word beginning with a vowel follows, as in clutter up and an acre of land. The main or primaiy stress of a word is shown by' preceding the relevant syllable; any secondary stress in words of three or more syllables is shown by , preceding the relevant syllable.

Principal abbreviations a. (in dates) Austral attrib b. Brit c. (in dates) cap cent. cf. comb form compar. conj derog esp. figint intr. N Amer NZ obs. OE orig perh. phr. pi. prep prob. pron refl S Aff sing. spec. super!. trans. transf. US usu.

before Australian (English) attributive bom British (English) about capital(s) century compare combining form comparative conjunction derogatoiy especially figurative interjection intransitive North American (Enghsh) New Zealand (Enghsh) obsolete Old Enghsh originally perhaps phrase plural preposition probably pronoun reflexive South African (Enghsh) singular specifically superlative transitive in transferred sense United States (Enghsh) usually

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