Submitted by wtd on 22 March 2009 - 5:52pm Compiled by William Denton
Originally published as a pamphlet by Miskatonic University Press, 1993.
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.5 Canada license. http://www.miskatonic.org/slang.html
If you've ever read a hardboiled detective story, you may have come across a sentence like,
"I jammed the roscoe right in his map and said, 'Close your yap, you bindle punk, or I squirt metal.'"
Something like this isn't too hard to decipher. But what if you encounter,
"You dumb mug, get your mitts off the marbles before I stuff that mud-pipe down your mush--and tell your moll to hand over the mazuma."
"The sucker with the schnozzle poured a slug but before he could scram out two trouble boys showed him the shiv and said they could send him to the jug."
You may need to translate this into normal English just to be able to follow the plot. Or maybe you want to seem tougher.
Why get in a car when you can hop in a boiler? Why tell someone to shut up when you can tell them to close their head? Why threaten to discharge a firearm when you can say, "Dust, pal, or I pump lead!"
This is the language spoken by Philip Marlowe, Sam Spade and Mike Hammer. When Cagney, Bogart, Robinson and Raft got in a turf war, this is how they talked. Now, with the help of this glossary, you too can speak it like a native!
* Ameche: Telephone
* Ankle: (verb) To walk
* Bangtails: Racehorses
* Be on the nut, To: To be broke
• Bean-shooter: Gun
• Beezer: Nose
• Behind the eight-ball: In a difficult position, in a tight spot
• Big house: Jail
• Big sleep, The: Death
• Bindle: the 'bundle' in which a hobo carries all his worldy possessions
• Bindle punk: Chronic wanderers; transient criminals and miratory harvest workers. Called so because they carried a "bindle." (George and Lenny in Of Mice and Men are bindle punks.)
• Bing: Jailhouse talk for solitary confinement, hence "crazy"
• Boiler: Car
• Box job: A safecracking
• Broad: Woman
• Broderick, The: A thorough beating
• Bump gums: To talk about nothing worthwhile
• Butter and egg man: The money man, the man with the bankroll, a yokel who comes to town to blow a big wad in nightclubs
• Cabbage: Money
• Cat: Man
• Cheaters: Sunglasses
• Cheese it: Put things away, hide
• Chicago lightning: gunfire
• Chicago overcoat: Coffin
• Chin music: Punch on the jaw
• Chinese squeeze: Grafting by skimming profits off the top
• Chippy: Woman of easy virtue
• Chisel: To swindle or cheat
• Chiv, chive: Knife, "a stabbing or cutting weapon"
• Clip joint: In some cases, a night-club where the prices are high and the patrons are fleeced
• Corn: Bourbon ("corn liquor")
• Croaker: Doctor
• Cush: Money (a cushion, something to fall back on)
• Daisy: A not-very-masculine man
• Dame: Woman
• Dark meat: Black person
• Daylight, as in "fill him with daylight": Put a hole in, by shooting or stabbing
• Deck, as in "deck of Luckies": Pack of cigarettes
• Derrick: Shoplifter
• Do the dance: To be hanged
• Dogs: Feet
• Drop a dime: Make a phone call, sometimes meaning to the police to inform on someone
• Droppers: Hired killers
• Duck soup: Easy, a piece of cake
• Dust: Leave, depart, as in "Let's dust"
• Eel juice: liquor
• Finger, Put the finger on: to identify someone in a police line-up
• Flimflam: Swindle
• Flophouse: A cheap and often grubby hotel, favoured by low-lifes.
• Gams: Legs (especially a woman's)
• Gashouse, as in "getting gashouse": Rough
• Give the third: Interrogate (third degree)
• Glad rags: Fancy clothes
• Goog: Black eye
• Goon: Thug
• Grift: A con game or swindle "What's the grift?": What are you trying to pull?
• Grifter: Con man
• Grilled: Questioned
• Hack: Taxi
• Hammer and saws: Police (rhyming slang for laws)
• Harlem sunset: Some sort fatal injury caused by knife
• Hash house: A cheap restaurant
• Heater: A gun
• High pillow: Person at the top, in charge
• Highbinders: Corrupt politicians
• Hitting on all eight: In good shape, going well (refers to eight cylinders in an engine)
• Hock shop: Pawnshop
• Horn: Telephone
• Hot: Stolen
• Ice : Diamonds
• Joe: Coffee, as in "a cup of joe"
• Johns: Police
• Johnson brother: Criminal
• Joint: Place (eg: apartment), as in "Hey, let's all go back to my joint"
• Jorum of skee: Shot of liquor
• Juice: Interest on a loanshark's loan
• Jug: Jail
• Keister: Buttocks
• Kicking the gong around: Taking opium
• Large: $1,000; twenty large would be $20,000
• Lid: Hat
• Lip: Lawyer
• Lit, To be: To be drunk
• Map: Face
• Mark: Sucker, victim of swindle or fixed game
• Meat wagon: Ambulance
• Mesca: Marijuana
• Mickey Finn (noun) A drink that's been drugged to knock someone out
• Nailed: Caught by the police
• Nancy: An effeminate man
• Nevada gas: Cyanide
• Newshawk: Reporter
• Noodle: Head
• Nose-candy: Heroin
• Off the track, as in "He was too far off the track. Strictly section eight": Said about a man who becomes insanely violent
• Palooka: Man, probably a little stupid
• Peaching: Informing
• Patsy: Person who is set up; fool, chump
• Put the screws on: Question, get tough with
• Queer: (noun) Counterfeit or (verb) To ruin something or put it wrong ("queer this racket")
• Rats and mice: rhyming slang for 'Dice' (i.e. craps)
• Rattler: Train
• Red-light: To eject from a car or train
• Redhot: Some sort of criminal
• Reefers: Marijuana cigarettes
• Rhino: Money
• Roscoe: Gun
• Rube: Bumpkin, easy mark
• Rumble, the: The news
• Schnozzle: Nose
• Scratch: Money
• Scratcher: Forger
• Screw: Prison guard
• Shiv: Knife
• Shylock: Loanshark
• Shyster: Lawyer
• Skid rogue: A bum who can't be trusted
• Skip out: Leave a hotel without paying, or a person who does so
• Smoke: A black person
• Snow-bird: (Cocaine) addict
• Soup: Nitroglycerine
• Soup job: To crack a safe using nitroglycerine
• Spill: Talk, inform; spill it = tell me
• Sting: Culmination of a con game
• Stool-pigeon: Informer
• Swift, To have plenty of: To be fast (on the draw)
• Take it on the heel and toe: Leave
• Take the bounce: To get kicked out (here, of a hotel)
• Take the fall for: Accept punishment for
• That's the crop: That's all of it
• Three-spot: Three-year term in jail
• Throw a joe: Pass out unconscious
• Throw lead: Shoot bullets
• Ticket: Private Investigator's license
• Tin: Badge
• Tooting the wrong ringer: Asking the wrong person
• Trip for biscuits, as in "You get there fast and you get there alone - or you got a trip for biscuits": Make the trip for no purpose, achieve no results
• Trouble boys: Gangsters
• Uppers: as in "I've been on my uppers for months now" or "I'm down on my uppers": To be broke
• Vag, as in vag charge, vag law: Vagrancy
• Vig, Vigorish: Excessive interest on a loanshark's loan
• Wheats, as in "a stack of wheats": Pancakes
• Wire, as in "What's the wire on them?": News, "What information do you have about them?"
