Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Aus./N.Z.) sensible, intelligent, aware, trustworthy, ‘all there’; esp. in negative phr. not (quite) the full shilling etc, not very intelligent, slightly eccentric, odd (cf. full quid, the under full adj.).

1982		(con. 1930s–50s) E. Mac Thomáis Janey Mack, Me Shirt is Black 35: We must been all losing our marbles. We really weren’t the full shilling looking for a duck’s arse for the back of our necks.
1987		L. Redmond Emerald Square 178: Even had he been the full shilling, I suspected work was a four letter word in his vocabulary.
1993		(con. 1930s) M. Verdon Shawlies, Echo Boys, the Marsh and the Lanes 55: My father shook his head and said, ‘Stay away from that woman. She’s not the full shilling’.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We have No 112: Not quite the full shilling.
2004		N. ‘Razor’ Smith A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun 71: Pete was not the full shilling.
2007		Guardian 11 Mar. 🌐 The policeman, it turns out, isn’t quite the full shilling, just a sitting stand-in in a uniform.

2. (Irish) the proper, complete thing.

1965

L. Dunne Goodbye to The Hill (1966) 99: Now that we’d started on the full shilling I agreed with her that we might as well go to bed and do it in comfort.

unintelligent, eccentric; shilling is implied in cit. 1996.

1919		Register (Adelaide) 3 May 5/9: The defendant’s father said, ‘My son is three pence short of a shilling in his faculties’.
1932		N. Territory Times 10 June 4/2: He trades on the prevalent belief that he is, as the saying goes, ‘a few pence short in the shilling’.
1982		J. Sullivan ‘Ashes to Ashes’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] I know a lot of people are born an ’apenny short of a shilling.
1984		A. Sayle Train to Hell 11: ‘Three kopecks short of a rouble,’ I thought.
1987		(con. 1920s) L. Redmond Emerald Square 177: Where I came from it would have been said that he was ‘a ha’penny short of a shilling’.
1996		J. Cameron It Was An Accident 47: You got to be a penny short.
2011		http://dennisbenson.net 14 Nov. 🌐 Thankfully the British conspiracy brigade is [...] inhabited mainly by people who are clearly three pence short of the proverbial shilling.

stupid, foolish.

1988		Viz Oct./Nov. 13: Sid man, yorraboot ninepence short of a shillin’!
2020		Twitter 10 Feb. 🌐 Johnson has this thing about wasting money on Bridges [...] the man has to be sixpence short.

foolish, stupid, lacking intelligence.

1914		C. Holme Lonely Plough (1931) 229: Brack and his housekeeper seemed much of a piece, and neither of them more than eleven pence in the shilling.
1936		W. Holtby South Riding (1988) 8: ‘Mental?’ ‘Tenpence halfpenny in the shilling.’.

stupid, foolish.

1968

G. Slatter Pagan Game (1969) 153: Every small town has its characters: Stainless Steel who had seen the light [...] Joey who was only eighteen shillings.

a short sensational novel, published at a shilling (5p).

1885		Bristol Mercury 16 Nov. 6/3: Mr R.L. Stevenson is writing another ‘shilling dreadful’ in which supernatural machinery will be employed.
1886		Pall Mall Gaz. 9 Aug. 4/2: Even in the realm of the shilling shocker these manners and morals are passing away.
1886		Pall Mall Gaz. 25 Sept. 4/1: ‘A Phantom Lover’ and ‘Whose Hands’ are both shilling dreadfuls.
1889		J.K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat 43: But, as the shilling shockers say, we anticipate.
1890		Portsmouth Eve. News (Devon) 23 Jan. 3/4: Lord Wolseley counselled his hearers to shun the ‘shilling dreadful’.
1898		Binstead & Wells Pink ’Un and Pelican 240: A meddling member of the bar, who should have been writing shilling shockers.
1901		Bath Chron. (Somerset) 11 Apr. 7/3: He covertly lit his candle [...] in order to read a yellow-covered shocker.
1901		Hull Dly Mail (Yorks.) 11 July 2/7: The penny dreadful;, the shilling shocker, and the comic cuts illustrated.
1902		W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 9 Mar. 1/1: A spicy novel could be written about his recent after-church amours [and] the saintly shilling-shocker would be appositely entitled ‘Venus in the Vestry’.
1910		Bath Chron. (Somerset) 15 Sept. 4/4: The sensual ‘passion story,’ the morbidly sensational ‘shocker’ and the ridiculous romance.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 11/1: The police-cum-reporter sensationalism [...] probably had its origin in some shilling shocker.
1917		G. De S. Wentworth-James Man Market 151: All shilling ‘shockers’ are composed of certain ingredients, and doubtless one of the most popular is the hero or heroine who [...] leaves a note saying that he or she has committed suicide – which of course, he or she hasn’t done.
1919		J. Buchan Mr Standfast (1930) 580: I have a grudge against you for mixing up the Coolin with a shilling shocker. You’ve spoiled their sanctity.
1922		John O’London’s Weekly 7 Jan. 463/1: Probably Edgar Wallace’s best ‘shocker’ – and I use the term in no derogatory sense – was ‘The Four Just Men’.
1924		J. Buchan Three Hostages in Buchan (1930) 857: These shockers are too easy, Dick. You could invent better ones for yourself.
1934		Western Dly Press 23 Feb. 8/3: ‘The Bookworm’ attempted to act the plot of a ‘shilling shocker’.
1941		Eve. Teleg. (Angus, Scot.) 18 Oct. 7/1: The sort of thing one reads about in a shilling shocker.
1971		(ref. to late 19C) C. Watson Snobbery with Violence (1979) 109: This special language of the shilling shocker [...] was doubtless evolved in the first place as a means of getting attention by frightening people.

see sixpenny sicker under sixpenny adj.

a Baptist or Methodist tea-meeting, where refreshment was available at a shilling (5p) a head.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

see the shiny bob under bob n.³

(Aus./N.Z.) a bar-room dice gambling game in which everyone puts one shilling (5p) in a kitty and the winner pays for the round (and poss. makes a small profit).

1880		Eve. Post (Wellington) 7 Jan. 17: A man had paid his shilling in a game of ‘shilling in and the winner shouts’ [AND].
1886		Victorian Law Reports 749: A game called or known as ‘a shilling in and the winner shouts’.
1898		E.E. Morris Austral Eng. 456/1: Tamabroora [...] More generally known as ‘A shilling in and the winner shouts’.
1900		Advocate (Burnie) 29 May 4/1: They were having ‘a shilling in and the winner shouts’ when he arrived .
1907		Sun. Times (Perth) 14 Apr. 1/1: His X and Co. slipped out unobserved by the thirsty smoodgers [and] these ‘influential ratepayers’ were therefore compelled to descend to a ‘shilling in’.
1920		(ref. to late 19C) Bulletin 20/2: Some Western Queensland slang of my day: … a shilling-in was ‘tambaroora’.