Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to boost an audience by giving out free passes to a show or entertainment; thus papered/papery adj., filled by means of free passes.

1859		E. Fitzball Thirty-five Years Dramatic Author’s Life II 113: The second night comes, the unfailing ‘Lady of Lyons’ [...] House well papered.
1879		Cincinnati Enquirer 7 Sept. 10/7: Papered—When the house contains a large number of persons who have come in on complimentary tickets.
1885		Referee 8 Nov. n.p.: The stalls were partly papery, and partly empty [F&H].
1886		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 14 Aug. 2/2: Notwithstanding the artistic success of Daly’s company in London business is bad, all the houses doing poorly and all ‘papering’ freely.
1890		London Figaro 1 June n.p.: A box now and then, or carte-blanche in the way of papering a theatre, will go far to wring from them profuse admiration of everything and everybody [F&H].
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 20 Jan. 28/2: Australian theatrical scribes commonly write of a crowded theatre as a ‘packed’ house, which phrase would in England convey that the house had been extensively ‘papered’ (using ‘packed’ as it is applied to a jury or political meeting).
1913		Omaha Dly Bee (NE) 14 Sept. 36/1: He said on the jump that he did not wish to think of us in town after town, papering the house, and even at that we couldn’t fill ’em.
1929		J.B. Booth London Town 57: House-papering devices are numerous.
1938		J.B. Booth Sporting Times 74: He sat [...] engaged in the mysterious process known as ‘papering the house’.
2024		D. Rucker Life’s Too Short 59: He makes sure we’ll be playing in front of a crowd and that the crowd will love us. In other words, he papers the house.

2. (US to pawn) .

1916

Seattle Star (WA) 11 Nov. 8/3: Key to Broadway Slang! ‘What do you say to papering the hoop and kicking the gong?’ ‘K.O.!’.

3. (US) to pass bad cheques or any other form of fraudulent money-related document.

1925		Flynn’s Mag. 7 Mar. 191/2: Paper, [...] to pass worthless or forged checks.
1974		(con. 1940s) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 66: Papering some dinky burg with little old ten- and twenty-buck hot checks.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 134/1: paperv. 2 to pass false cheques.

4. to issue parking tickets.

1970		D. Burnham ‘Police (Cops?) have Slanguage of Own’ in N.Y. Times 15 Feb. 65/3: ‘I really papered that block’.
2003		Simon & Burns ‘Collateral Damage’ Wire ser. 2 ep. 1 [TV script] We’re supposed to ride past your union hall twice a day and paper cars.

5. (US) to file self-serving documents, memoranda, etc. as a safeguard against future (legal) attack.

1974

E.H. Hunt Undercover n.p.: [photo insert] [His] self-protectiveness in recording our phone conversations, passing my letters to others and writing ex post facto memoranda to ‘paper’ his files turned out to be no help to him.

6. (N.Z. prison) to ‘write up’ an inmate for an offence.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 134/1: paperv. 1 (also paper upor paper (someone) up) to charge an inmate with an offence.

7. (US police) to bribe.

2005

R. Cea No Lights, No Sirens 167: ‘[T]hey must’ve thought he was papering us or think we been on his dick to get padded’.

8. (US) to make official by filling out the necessary authorizing paperwork.

2020

D. Winslow ‘Broken’ in Broken 41: And even if they got the raid papered, the goal would be to arrest Diaz,.