Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pump n.

1. in senses of an engine or machine.

(a) the penis.

[UK]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.
[UK]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.
[UK]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.
[Ire]Joyce Ulysses 506: Buy a bucket or sell your pump.
[US]D. Dee Golden Betty 13: The thick, masculine pump grew even larger with desire.
[UK]A. Sillitoe Start in Life (1979) 192: I’m planning to get my pump into her, aren’t I, pet?

(b) the vagina.

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

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

J.B. Buckstone Bear Hunters I ii: Your pumps have been at work – you’ve been crying, girl!
[Scot] ‘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].

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

(e) the heart.

[[US]S. Ford Shorty McCabe 20: We’d brought along a genuine invalid with a leak in his blood pump].
[US]Maines & Grant Wise-crack Dict. 12/1: Old pump – Heart.
[US]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.
[UK]P. Cheyney Dames Don’t Care (1960) 163: I give him two right through the pump.
[US]W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 218: Someone plugged this character right in the pump.
[US](con. 1919) G. Fowler Schnozzola 30: My boss here, he has a leaky pump.
[US](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.
[US]S. King It (1987) 93: Lecithin, which is supposed to do someting about that embarrassing chloresterol build-up in and around the Big Pump.
[US]J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 44: My pump. It’s like, missing beats!
[US]C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 217: They’ve been telling me for twenty years the pump could crap out any minute.
[US]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.

[US]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.
[US]D.J. Marlowe Vengeance Man (2007) 97: I’m tired of having my wife referred to behind my back as the town pump.
[US]E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 535: OK. OK. I’m a rotten mother and a town pump.
[US]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?’.
[US]A. Rodriguez Spidertown (1994) 58: I went out with this girl. Everybody calls huh the Pump.
[Scot]I. Welsh Glue 35: A total fuckin pump.
[Scot]I. Welsh Decent Ride 389: That Donna Lawson [...] That’s a total pump, a fuckin cow ay the highest order.

(g) (Aus.) an act of sexual intercourse.

[Aus]A. Buzo Rooted III i: Simmo had her that night at the last school dance. They had a pump in the bike shed.
[UK]M. Novotny Kings Road 86: She’d never leave me alone after experiencing one of my pumps!
[Scot]G. Armstrong Young Team 119: ‘Finnegan’s just wantin another pump at Toni!’.

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

[[US]A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Pump, a pistol].
[US]J. Sayles Union Dues (1978) 294: Francis ups with his Remington-pump.
[US]E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 66: D’ police he pull his pump out.
[US](con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 112: The shotguns were pumps.
[US]UGK ‘Pocket Full of Stones’ 🎵 Pistol Grip pump in my lap at all times.
[US]Coolio ‘Gangsta’s Paradise’ 🎵 I guess they won’t, I guess they front / That’s why I got my hand on the pump, foo!
[US](con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 26: Moore grabbed his pump. Wayne pulled his piece.
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.
Big Shaq ‘Man Not Hot’ 🎵 Hold tight, Asnee (my brotha), he’s got the pumpy (big ting).
[US](con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 377: [I] grabbed a 12-gauge pump.

(i) a nose.

[US]S. King Thinner (1986) 96: One who hadn’t discovered the pleasure of plugging fifty dollars’ worth of cocaine up his pump every day.
[US]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.

2. an indirect question.

[UK]Richardson Pamela I 208: For all her pumps, she gave no hint [F&H].

3. with ref. to pumped air.

(a) a pompous fool.

[UK] ‘All England Are Slanging It’ Universal Songster I 39/2: Ah! you’re a precious pump.
[UK]London Standard 19 Jan. 3/4: Spoon — a sawney, a Johnny Raw, a rural, a goose, a pump, a sappy.
[UK]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.
[UK]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’.
[US]J. Brougham Basket of Chips 361: The self-satisfied, pompous, hignorance of them turnip-faced pumps in spectacles.
[UK]J. Diprose London Life 44: Betsy Simmons, you’re a pump!
[UK] ‘’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.

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

In compounds

pump dale (n.) [SE dale, a wooden tube that carries water away from a ship’s pump]

the vagina.

[UK]N. Ward Wooden World 3: That Sage hit it best undoubtedly, who compar’d a Ship to a Woman. [...] her Pump-dale smells strongest when she has the soundest Bottom.
pump-thunder

see separate entries.

In phrases

prime one’s pump (v.)

to masturbate.

[US]quinnelk T. Rex’s Guide to Life 🌐 Okay, since people don’t want to actually say the m-word and the chicken and monkey phrases have been used to death on MTV, I thought it would be my duty to provide you with a bevy of other useful terminology that may be helpful in this area: [...] priming the pump.
prime someone’s pump (v.)

to fellate; thus pump-primer n.

[US](con. 1949) J.G. Dunne True Confessions (1979) 229: Lucille Cotter was called Silver Tongue for obvious reasons. A real pump primer.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

pump-handle

see separate entries.

pump jockey (n.) [jockey n.2 (4b)]

(US) a petrol pump attendant.

[US](con. 1958) R. Farina Been Down So Long (1972) 118: See her in a year, straddling some pump-jockey in the front seat of a ’46 Ford, knocked up.
[US](con. 1949) J.G. Dunne True Confessions (1979) 275: A pump jockey. In a gas station. Signal Oil. [...] The guy who wipes the bird shit off your windscreen.
[US]C. Hiaasen Skin Tight 116: Don’t you even want to know what the [...] pump jockey really said?
[UK]J. Mowry Six Out Seven (1994) 4: Running to wake a dozing pump jockey as the trucks began down-shifting whenever they were going to pull in.
[US](con. 1963) L. Berney November Road 62: At the filling station on La Porte, the pump jockey squinted at Guidry.
[US](con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 89: [S]he only really rolls over for celebs and pump jockeys.
pump juice (n.)

(US) water.

A. Baer Concerning Mr Bryan 2 Aug. [synd. col.] He can spot a rainbow in a glass of pump juice where another guy can only pipe a germ.
pump-pump (n.)

see separate entry.

In phrases

give a pump to (v.)

(US) to inform, to excite (negatively).

H. Hershfield Abie the Agent [synd. cartoon strip] He has cut in to my ‘Complex’ sales smething terrible. He lives here. Now to give a pump to the neighbors!
under the pump (adj.)

(Aus.) under pressure, facing negative critism.

[Aus]N. Cummins Tales of the Honey Badger [ebook] There was a fair bit of tension because the team were under the pump in the media back home.