Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the penis, esp. in the context of impotence.

1623		Dekker Wonder of a Kingdom IV i: Goe, idle droane, Thou enviest bees with stings, because thine’s gone.
1665–71		Rochester ‘Platonic Lady’ in Works (1999) 35: Just like the bee whose sting is gone / [Intercourse] converts the owner to a drone.
1675		Wycherley Country-Wife III ii: Now your Sting is gone, you look’d in the Box amongst all those Women, like a drone in the hive.
1719		in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy II 24: I hate, she cry’d, a Hector, a Drone without a Sting.

2. (Aus.) strong (cheap) drink; occas. methylated spirits.

1914		Sport (Adelaide) 28 Aug. 5/5: T is for Tom K., who drank all the sting .
1918		Aussie (France) 7 Sept. 15/1: Snooker gave 10 piastres for a bottle of sting.
1929		K.S. Prichard Coonardoo 60: Misses his three square meals a day and sting.
1966		J. Holledge Great Aust. Gamble 131: It took six men to overpower him and keep him trussed up all night until the ‘stimulating’ effects of the ‘sting’ wore off.
1972		J. De Hoog Skid Row Dossier 4: You can share a bottle of sting (methylated spirits) down a lane [OED].

3. any form of robbery, esp. as a complex fraud planned well in advance; also attrib.

1933		Ersine Und. and Prison Sl.
1937		(con. 1905–25) E.H. Sutherland Professional Thief (1956) 169: You guys listen to me, I know where the good stings lie.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 49: When the time comes to make the big bet, the sting is put in a little differently.
1959		C. Himes Crazy Kill 74: Who made the sting last night, sport?
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 38: After a particularly big sting, he bought a Cadillac and began pimping.
1972		Milner & Milner Black Players 135: One night Velvet came into a bar high-siding about the big ‘sting’ his ho had achieved. An elderly trick had given her eleven hundred dollars in exchange for her phony promise that she would use it to escape her ‘life of sin’.
1980		(con. 1940s–60s) H. Huncke ‘Whitey’ in Eve. Sun Turned Crimson (1998) 213: We talked [...] Of making a few stings, of getting bread together.
1989		A. Vachss Hard Candy (1990) 91: You’re a hijacker. A sting artist.
1997		L. Pettiway Workin’ It 129: I did a sting for twenty-three hundred dollars.
2001		K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 56: I’ve [...] always blagged it that it’s only a little VAT sting.
2006		G. Malkani Londonstani (2007) 179: Dey part a dis sting operation I got goin down.
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 238: Guys like Louis, con artists at heart, sometimes they smell a sting.

4. (Aus.) a drug, esp. as given to a racehorse.

1920		Northam Courier (WA) 24 Sept. 2/2: Then the punters roar and hoot ’em, the bookies cheer and sing, / And often get a skinner, when a gee gee’s had the sting.
1949		L. Glassop Lucky Palmer 36: They’re going to give it the sting. They’ll hit it with enough dope to win a Melbourne Cup.
1958		F.J. Hardy Four-Legged Lottery 173: They were Victorian horses [...] Their trainers used the old-fashioned Melbourne stings.

5. (US black) a wallet.

1934		J.L. Kuethe ‘Prison Parlance’ in AS IX:1 27: sting. A pocketbook.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

6. (US Und.) a reasonably large sum of money ($500 average) obtained by some form of deception or trickery.

1965		B. Jackson Get Your Ass in the Water (1974) 123: It may just be our lucky day, and we take a healthy sting.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 11: Sweeter is when we start taking off those big stings.
1983		N. Heard House of Slammers 88: Bud hesitated cause he’d underrated / And thought he could make a sting.

7. a police undercover operation designed to entrap alleged criminals; also attrib.

1977		Teleg. (Brisbane) 24 Aug. 25/2: ‘Sting’ officers operated in old warehouses and run-down storefronts, developed close contacts with loose-lipped thugs who believed they dealt with fellow criminals .
1986		C. Stroud Close Pursuit (1988) 144: The usual reaction [...] was to set up a sting operation against the accused man.
1999		Guardian 26 Aug. 12: American Airline workers caught in cocaine sting.
2004		L. Redhead Peepshow [ebook] I told her about the sting, and how Farquhar was safely locked away.
2007		C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 41: For such stings he carried around a department-issued rubber dick.
2012		C. Stella Rough Riders 13: Stewart was working a sting for federal agents.
2016		Vanity Fair 16 Mar. 🌐 Wood, 58, was sentenced to four years in prison in 2002, after being trapped in a police sting in a bugged Surrey hotel room.
2020		D. Winslow ‘The San Diego Zoo’ in Broken 159: [S]etting up the original criminal for a sting.

8. in attrib. use of sense 7.

2012

Cape Argus (SA) 13 Jan. 🌐 We have sting operations at another three [places].

9. (W.I.) the currently favoured object, person, experience.

1995

Francis-Jackson Official Dancehall Dict. 50: Sting the flavour of the moment; breath taking: u. a da ta sting.

10. (N.Z. prison, also stinging lady) a prison-made tattoo machine.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 178/1: sting a tattoo machine [...] stinging lady, the n. a tattoo machine.