chromo, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

chromo n.

[SE chromolithograph, a picture printed in colours from stone; although sense 4 is uniquely Aus.; the image equates an over-dressed, over-made-up prostitute with a chromolithograph – both are colourful and flashy, but neither resembles natural beauty]

1. (US) any form of counterfeit financial document, e.g. a bond, a share certificate.

1886

A. Pinkerton Thirty Years a Detective 77: There’s some crooked stuff [...] If you have any doubt about the ‘chromos’ being negotiable and all right anywhere on the Continent, why, we’ll just go out and try them.

2. (US campus) something above average.

1896

W.C. Gore Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 12: chromo n. 1. Something better than the average. ‘That essay is a chromo.’ [This use probably dates from the time (about twenty-five or thirty years ago) when chromos were somewhat rare and thought to be beautiful].

3. an ugly, distasteful person.

1881		Daily L.A. Herald 13 Aug. 2/3: He calls a beautiful woman a ‘lalla,’ a ‘dandy,’ or a ‘corker,’ and an ugly one a ‘chromo’.
1896		W.C. Gore Student Sl. in Cohen (1997) 12: chromo n. […] 2. A homely person. 3. A vague term of derision.
1907		W.M. Raine Bucky O’Connor (1910) 216: She’s a princess, Cork [...] Makes my Epitaph gyurl look like a chromo beside her.
1916		J. Lait ‘Second from the End’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 193: A weather-beaten old society chromo.
1928		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 46: (IS: Playing the duck as the chromo of the party gets ready to be escorted home) I don’t take horseface — no siree!
1931		D. Runyon ‘The Old Doll’s House’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 71: No newspaper dast to say she looks like an old chromo.
1953		T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 98: What an old chromo!

4. (Aus., also cromo, crow) a prostitute.

1937		J. Curtis You’re in the Racket, Too 187: There might be quite a chance of having a right-looking cromo give him a tumble.
1944		L. Glassop We Were the Rats 103: Not bad for chromos are they?
1950		S.J. Baker in Sun. Herald (Sydney) 8 June 9/2: There’s [...] the ‘crow’ or ‘chromo,’ street woman, the ‘bludger,’ who exploits street women for financial ends.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 230/1: band (cake, cromo, low-heel) – a prostitute.
1959		D. Niland Big Smoke 152: He remembered the few harlots Big Lew had brought up there, and he remembered him like that when he brought up that old chromo from Campbell Street.
1960		J. Iggulden Storms of Summer 297: Some rotten poxy bitch of a chromo dobbed them in.
1967		‘Whisper All Aussie Dict.’ in Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxiii 4/4: chromo: A prostitute. From the two words Crow and Moll.
1977		T. Ronan Mighty Men on Horseback 65: He butted in on some bloke who had a chromo in tow.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak.