jelly n.2
1. (orig. Aus.) gelignite.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl. 11: can o’ jelly – a container of nitro or gelatine explosive. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Popular Dict. Aus. Sl. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Till Human Voices Wake Us 53: Everything like Dets, Gelly, etc., has to be strictly accounted for. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Boss of Britain’s Underworld 83: Gelignite is [...] no use on a safe which is concreted into a stone floor. Jelly only blow a hole in the safe then. | |
| Crust on its Uppers 57: Send him out with a pound of jelly, dets, or a dodgy twirl and then grass him. | |
| Concrete Kimono 173: Geli’ might be too noisy. | |
| Inside the Und. 87: Jelly mostly comes from Scottish mines. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 22: The gelly disappears an’ the next night the Prods blow the Hiberian hall. | |
| Fish Factory 26: How much geli’ did you put in that last charge? | |
| Black Billy Tea 45: When you have got to build a railway through the hills! / It takes an awful lot of ‘jelly’, shovels and picks. | |
| Tax Inspector (1992) 56: She waved the gelly at him: ‘You grab me and you’re minced meat’. | |
| Chopper From The Inside 35: I’ll take him fishing, a stick of ‘gellie’ in the river and bang, we’ll be knee deep in trout. | |
| Sydney Morn. Herald Good Weekend 24 Nov. 31/3: ‘I was so f...ing mad I was going to put a stick of gelly [...] under his shit-can and blow the c..t up’. | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 85: gelly/jelly Gelignite, early C20 here and later elsewhere. | |
| Raiders 138: You just pack the [safe] door with ‘gelly’, stand well back, and boom! there’s the money. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | All the Colours 318: [W]eeping sticks of gelly from the Ayrshire pits. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
| Und. Nights 191: He had somehow managed to exchange the gelly sticks for Edinburgh rock. |
3. napalm.
| ‘A Boy and his Dog’ in Beast that Shouted Love (1976) 180: It [a film] was mostly gut-spilling [...] with napalm throwers, jellyburning a Chink town. | |
| ‘On the Yankee Station’ in On the Yankee Station (1982) 131: There just ain’t nothing to beat this jelly, man. It’s gonna win us the woah. |
In compounds
a robber who specializes in gelignite to open safes.
| Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 113: Limehouse Louie was a pal of mine and a top-flight jelly baby. | |
| DSUE (8th edn) 615: since late 1940s. |
(N.Z. prison) a safebreaker.
| Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 95/2: jelly man n. a safe-opening expert. |