Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) the penis.

1645		Recreation for Ingenious Head-peeces (3rd) Epigram No. 21: M: I’le cut it down, I swear by this same hand. / If ’twill not run, it shal no longer stand. K: Pray Sir bee patient, let your Pump alone, How can it water make when’t hathe the stone.
1655		Mercurius Fumigosus 65 15-22 Aug. n.p.: The chief Matron of Jobs Ward being to view their tackling, to see if it all be right and straight, and that their Pumps be in repair.
1733		Laugh and Be Fat 15: You put up the Pump for your own Pleasure, and carry’d it away with you when you left the Tenement.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 506: Buy a bucket or sell your pump.
1968		D. Dee Golden Betty 13: The thick, masculine pump grew even larger with desire.
1970		A. Sillitoe Start in Life (1979) 192: I’m planning to get my pump into her, aren’t I, pet?

(b) the vagina.

1730		‘Gee Ho, Dobin’ in Farmer Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) II 204: I work’d at her Pump till the Sucker grew dry.
1790		‘Bumper Allnight. Esquire’ Honest Fellow [as 1730].

(c) in pl., the eyes [they pump out tears].

1825		J.B. Buckstone Bear Hunters I ii: Your pumps have been at work – you’ve been crying, girl!
1877		‘Bound ’Prentice to a Waterman’ in Laughing Songster 122: What sets my eye pumps a-going.

(d) (Scot.) a public house [metonymy f. the beer pumps].

1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 933/2: C.19–early 20.

(e) the heart.

[1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 20: We’d brought along a genuine invalid with a leak in his blood pump].
1926		Maines & Grant Wise-crack Dict. 12/1: Old pump – Heart.
1930		D. Hammett Maltese Falcon (1965) 302: Tom Polhaus poked his own left breast with a dirty finger. ‘Got him right through the pump — with this.’ He took a fat revolver from his coat-pocket and held it out to Spade.
1937		P. Cheyney Dames Don’t Care (1960) 163: I give him two right through the pump.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 218: Someone plugged this character right in the pump.
1952		(con. 1919) G. Fowler Schnozzola 30: My boss here, he has a leaky pump.
1977		(con. 1949) J.G. Dunne True Confessions (1979) 28: Here was one ginney getting his glass blown [...] and another ginney comes in and gives him three in the pump.
1986		S. King It (1987) 93: Lecithin, which is supposed to do someting about that embarrassing chloresterol build-up in and around the Big Pump.
1990		J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 44: My pump. It’s like, missing beats!
2007		C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 217: They’ve been telling me for twenty years the pump could crap out any minute.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 5: I’ve got emphysema and a bum pump.

(f) a promiscuous woman, usu. ‘localized’, e.g., town pump, village pump.

1949		J.H. Burns Lucifer with a Book 276: Guy Hudson saw blond Buddy Brown, with his arm around the waist of Ginny Snelgrove, the town pump.
1966		D.J. Marlowe Vengeance Man (2007) 97: I’m tired of having my wife referred to behind my back as the town pump.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 535: OK. OK. I’m a rotten mother and a town pump.
1976		R. Price Blood Brothers 169: ‘Now, I hear things about this Annette, I don’t hafta go into details, you know what I mean.’ ‘What, she’s a village pump?’.
1993		A. Rodriguez Spidertown (1994) 58: I went out with this girl. Everybody calls huh the Pump.
2001		I. Welsh Glue 35: A total fuckin pump.
2015		I. Welsh Decent Ride 389: That Donna Lawson [...] That’s a total pump, a fuckin cow ay the highest order.

(g) an act of sexual intercourse.

1969		A. Buzo Rooted III i: Simmo had her that night at the last school dance. They had a pump in the bike shed.
1971		M. Novotny Kings Road 86: She’d never leave me alone after experiencing one of my pumps!
2020		G. Armstrong Young Team 119: ‘Finnegan’s just wantin another pump at Toni!’.
2020		A. Parks Bobby March Will Live Forever 110: ‘Quick pump on a Friday night’s all I get and a cheerio as he heads out the door’.

(h) (also pumpy) a gun, esp. a pump-action shotgun [abbr.].

[1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Pump, a pistol].
1977		J. Sayles Union Dues (1978) 294: Francis ups with his Remington-pump.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 66: D’ police he pull his pump out.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 112: The shotguns were pumps.
1992		UGK ‘Pocket Full of Stones’ 🎵 Pistol Grip pump in my lap at all times.
1995		Coolio ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ 🎵 I guess they won’t, I guess they front / That’s why I got my hand on the pump, foo!
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 26: Moore grabbed his pump. Wayne pulled his piece.
2015		thewire.co.uk Oct. 🌐 There are many terms for guns [in grime music], for instance, usually single syllable words that can be dropped quickly: heat, skeng, shotty, pumpy, glock, gat, and so on.
2017		Big Shaq ‘Man Not Hot’ 🎵 Hold tight, Asnee (my brotha), he’s got the pumpy (big ting).
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 377: [I] grabbed a 12-gauge pump.

(i) a nose.

1984		S. King Thinner (1986) 96: One who hadn’t discovered the pleasure of plugging fifty dollars’ worth of cocaine up his pump every day.
1993		S. King Dolores Claiborne 5: Gorry, there were times when you had that finger so far up y’nose it was a wonder you didn’t poke your brains out [...] Was never a kid alive who didn’t mine a little green gold outta their old pump every now and again.

(a) a pompous fool.

1825		‘All England Are Slanging It’ Universal Songster I 39/2: Ah! you’re a precious pump.
1829		London Standard 19 Jan. 3/4: Spoon — a sawney, a Johnny Raw, a rural, a goose, a pump, a sappy.
1840		R.B. Peake Devil In London II i i: Our party to the races will be anything but a pleasant one, to consist of all the old pumps that play the nightly round game for twopence a dozen.
1847		Punch XIII 213/1: Pump.- A term of profound contempt [...] Any one whose habits are opposed to those of a Fast Man, is necessarily a ‘Pump’. If a person will not smoke, or sing, or drink, when asked, he is for ever stigmatised as a ‘Pump’.
1855		J. Brougham Basket of Chips 361: The self-satisfied, pompous, hignorance of them turnip-faced pumps in spectacles.
1877		J. Diprose London Life 44: Betsy Simmons, you’re a pump!
1890		‘’Arry on Equality’ in Punch 22 Feb. 85/2: Where’d be the chance of a spree / If every pious old pump or young mug was the equal of Me?

(b) (Scot.) a breaking of wind.

1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 933/2: Scots; C.19–20.
2009		R. Milward Ten Storey Love Song 19: In some people pills create awful farts [and] Johnnie let off a string of terrible pumps.