sky n.1
1. (US black) a police officer; a prison warder [the blue uniform].
![]() | AS IX:1 27: sky. A uniformed policeman or guard. | ‘Prison Parlance’ in|
![]() | Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |
2. (US black) a hat [it is above the head].
![]() | N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 19 July 13: [I] let them latch onto that hard drape I’m wearing [...] and let them dig them stomps an’ that sky. | |
![]() | ‘Good-Doing Wheeler’ in Life (1976) 73: His fabulous sky was broke so fly / That the city had it banned. | et al.|
![]() | Aus. Women’s Wkly 3 Nov. 10/4: Now that Surfie talk is flaking. | |
![]() | My Main Mother 9: Big Larson, waving his ten-gallon sky back and forth in front of his highyellow face. | |
![]() | ‘About This Thing Called Ghetto Education’ in Szwed Black America 248: There was a black student in class with his hat on his head. I paced; I moved toward him; I got angry; I trembled. But [...] [o]nce I reflected on the way black males operate in relation to their ‘sky,’ dealing with hat-wearing presented no problem . | |
![]() | Ebonics Primer at www.dolemite.com 🌐 sky Definition: [a] hat Example: Y’all check out mah leopard-skin threads an’ matchin’ sky! |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
a psychiatrist.
![]() | Reported Safe Arrival 62: An the ole Sky-Artist’s writ dahn: ‘A ’orrible case er persistent fear, resultin’ from ante-natal trauma’. |
(US black) a hallucination.
![]() | Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 52: A ‘skybird’ is a hallucination of the mind, in which one visualizes such creatures. |
see separate entries.
(Aus.) a missionary.
![]() | Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Dec. 18/2: Premier Salisbury [...] practically said that many of the ‘sky-drummers’ went on the convert-trail in foreign lands with the idea that the British flag and British lyddite were in their back-pockets ready to avenge their chokers being pulled. |
see separate entry.
1. to run off, to move fast; to act irresponsibly.
![]() | letter Love & Valor (2000) 372: We are on the rampage after the rebels and [...] it is fun to sky-hoot over these hills and mountains after them. | |
![]() | Boy’s Own Paper Summer 38/1: Something’s sky-hooted in my shoulder [...] That brute threw me on my head. | |
![]() | Great Bend Trib. (KS) 6 May 3/1: ‘Go along, man! Divo’ce nothin’. Think I’ gwine t’ gin ’im what he wants [...] t’go sky-hootin’ roun’ ’mong dem gals? Na, sah!’. | |
![]() | Santa Ana Register (CA) 16 Dec. 6/3: ‘Young man [...] I advise you to quit this joyriding. Sky-hooting around the country [...] leads to reform school. | |
![]() | Merton of the Movies 7: What’s got into you lately? [...] Skyhootin’ around in here, leavin’ the front of the store unpertected. | |
![]() | Tampa Bay Times (St Ptersburg, FL) 13 Oct. 16/4: ‘Mebbe he’s bin skyhootin’ at night in them big cities’. | |
![]() | Holdfast Gaines 206: An’ ez fer razor-backs, y’ oughter see them fellers sky-hoot! | |
![]() | Searchers 207: It’s funny you leave a good ranch [...] to be worked by other men, while you sky-hoot the country from the Nations to Mexico. |
2. to rise, to increase.
![]() | Democrat & Chron. (Rochester, NY) 2 Nov. 14/2: Almost anything can happen nowadays. One food and then another goes sky-hooting for a season. | |
![]() | in Amer. Mercury Oct. 235/2: Jigger’s reputation as a ‘rugged’ man skyhooted from this point [W&F]. | |
![]() | Times (Munster, IN) 19 Jan. 13/1: Competiton would be calculated to sky-hoot my income. |
(US) rainwater [note Jam. sky juice, a popular drink of flavoured syrups poured over shaved ice].
![]() | Wilmington Morn. Star (NC) 1 Oct. 1/3: ‘When upon the “move” to day / Sky-juice on your traps shall play / [...] / Please sir, call your water home!’. | |
![]() | Hawaiian Gaz. (Honolulu, HI) 17 Apr. 1/6: At present Hilo is wel supplied with sky juice. | |
![]() | Boston Wkly Globe (MA) 5 July 2/8: The Sky Juice. Reports of damage by floods continue to come in [...] In the East we still prefer to call rain, rain. | |
![]() | in Saskatchewan History 30 (1977) 48: One May 1904 news item reported succinctly that ‘our streets are muddy — about two inches of sky juice fell Monday’. | |
![]() | Delaware Co. Dly Times (Chester, PA) 26 Jan. 3/3: [headline] Sky Juice puts Quietus on Soccer Games. | |
![]() | Nat. Drug Clerk 9 n.p.: Little Boy: ‘Please can I have a drink of water?’ Dispenser: ‘Sorry little chap but we are just out of water. We have some delicious aqua pura distillata, commonly called sky-juice’. | |
![]() | Wise-crack Dict. | |
![]() | ‘Patois of Annapolis’ in Sheboygan (WI) Press 17 Sept. 8/3: Water is ‘sky juice.’. | |
![]() | diary 29 May in G. Midlo-Hall Love, War & 96th Engineers (Colored) 54: A deluge of rain [...] caused my shelter roof to fall in and dump no less than ten gallons of sky juice onto my bed. | |
![]() | Men Against the Stars 87: It’s by blood and sweat, by the last drop of sky juice and the last microvolt in our capacitors and the last thump of our engines. | |
![]() | Pensacola News (FL) 3 Aug. 4/6: Public spirited cooperative arrangements would provide relief from excess sky juice for some residents. | |
![]() | Dly World (Opelousas, LA) 3 July 17/3: She orders ‘Sky Juice on the Rocks’ [...] Bartenders are befuddled until Mrs Doucet explains that sky juice is water. | |
![]() | Thought Gang 25: The sky juice marinated me with my suitcase which had grown a heaviness that outdid its volume. | |
![]() | Something Is Holding Me Back 2: My body aches to be kissed by the cooling droplets of sky juice. |
see under kick n.4
see lark v. (1)
see separate entry.
the small space between the top of a glass and the drink within it.
![]() | He Would be a Soldier VI i: Fill your glass higher – higher yet; I’ll have no skylights – This is a bumper toast. | |
![]() | Honest Fellow [check]: No sky-lights. | |
![]() | Gradus ad Cantabrigiam 54: day-light, or sky-light, in the easy attained science of hard drinking, when the glass is not a bumper. | |
![]() | Headlong Hall (1816) 74: For a heeltap! a heeltap! I never could bear it! / No sky-light! no twilight! while Bacchus rules o’er us. | |
![]() | St Ronan’s Well (1833) 119: Come, Mick—no skylights—here is Clara’s health. | |
![]() | Jorrocks Jaunts (1874) 263: I’ll trouble you to charge your glasses, ’eel-taps off — a bumper toast — no skylights, if you please. | |
![]() | Punch 31 July I 34: Come, no skylights; ’tis as mild as new milk; there’s not a headache in a hogshead of it. | |
![]() | Handley Cross (1854) 232: Bumper-toast — no ‘eel-taps, no sky-lights. | |
![]() | Notes on a Cellar-Book 184: And if our fathers meant by ‘No heel-taps’ that you were always to drink the whole glassful at once, even with allowance of ‘skylight,’ I think that, for once, our fathers were wrong. |
1. the eyes.
![]() | Real Life in London II 149: Go it Kate!—Handle your dawdles, my girl; —shiver her ivory;—darken her skylights;—flatten her sneizer;—foul, foul,—ah you Munster b—ch! | |
![]() | Bell’s Life in London 21 Feb. 3/2: Sneezer and skylights, listeners, ribs and nob. | |
![]() | Tom Cringle’s Log (1862) 71: After a long look through his starboard blinker (his other skylight had been shut up ever since Aboukir), Captain Deadeye gave orders. | |
![]() | Golden Age (Queanbeyan, NSW) 4 Sept. 3/2: Tom’s fistic slang is like so much Hebrew to us, we being in a most pastoral state of ignorance as to the meanings of [...] ‘closing the skylights,’ ‘rolling in lemons,’ ‘drawing the vermillion,’ ‘tapping the claret,’ ‘flinging up the sponge,’ and the various other terms with which he garnishes his narrative. | |
![]() | Dublin Eve. Post 6 Sept. 4/4: Prhaps it may be that ‘plating a little ’un on his sky-lights’ sounds better than ‘committing a brutal assault’. | |
![]() | Montrose, Arboath & Brechin Rev. 4 Dec. 7/4: The ‘creeshie weaver’ went round him [...] darkening his skylights, ornamenting his nose [...] and making his mouth squint. | |
![]() | Strictly Business (1915) 51: Why, blast my skylights! | ‘The Day Resurgent’ in
2. spectacles.
![]() | Such is Life 268: If you’d a pair o’ skylights athort your cutwater, you’d be set for a professor of phrenology. |
1. a garret; occas. attrib.
![]() | Roman & Eng. Comedy Consider’d 40: How often that lucky Circumstance has recommended him to the Approbation of the Sky-parlour Gentry, I submit to the Critics on the Ground Floor. | |
, , | ![]() | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
![]() | ‘An Unfortunate Woman of the Town’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 410: I found her parlour nearest to the Sky! / Oh! what a wretched Falling-off. | |
![]() | Lex. Balatronicum. | |
![]() | Life in London (1869) 311: Bob and the party, chaffing, proposed to see the Author safe to his sky-parlour. | |
![]() | Dickens’ Journalism I (1994) 168: Now ladies, up in the sky-parlour; only once a year, if you please. | ‘The First of May’ in Slater|
![]() | Gleaner (Manchester, NH) 15 Apr. n.p.: Charles H. Peabody, editor of the ‘Boston Evening Bulletin,’ took a flogging [...] in his sanctum, or sky parlor. | |
![]() | Western Times (Devon) 10 Oct. 6/6: One bed [...] being unfortunately situate up in the rafters — it was literally a sky parlour. | |
![]() | Basket of Chips 400: Hup stairs [...] we found ourselves right smack up at the sky-parlor. | |
![]() | Little Dorrit (1967) 127: She has a lodging at the turnkey’s. First house there [...] First house, sky parlour. | |
![]() | Venus’ Miscellany (NY) 31 Jan. n.p.: An old toggery collector, resident in a respectable sky parlor [in] Rosemary Lane. | |
![]() | Professor at the Breakfast Table 208: On asking him what was the number of his room, he answered, that it was forty-’leven, sky-parlour floor. | |
![]() | Bell’s Life in Sydney 4 May 3/4: On entering the ‘sky parlour’ he twigged the skylight open. | |
![]() | Man about Town 16 Oct. 45/2: And Buttons to his couch has fled / In yon sky parlour steep. | |
![]() | Morn. Post (London) 28 Feb. 7/3: It was no use [...] to take proceedings against a ruined man in a sky parlour in Pimlico. | |
![]() | Birmingham Dly Post 30 Apr. 7: In the sky parlour of a house in the Rue des Martyrs, Paris, lives a venerable dame. | |
![]() | London up to Date 143: The guests’ lift takes you up to your sky-parlour on the sixth floor. | |
![]() | Eve. Teleg. 3/6 (Angus, Scot.) 14 Nov. 3/6: Rose Laurier went home to her sky parlour with the revolver. | |
![]() | Torchy 178: I didn’t know which sky parlor was vacant until I [...] finds my things out in the hall and a new lodger in my room. | |
![]() | Derby Dly Teleg. 19 May 6/3: Grisleda Blake called her ‘sky parlour’ a delightful little flat, high up ina tall grey building. |
2. (US) the highest tier of seats in a theatre, the ‘gods’.
![]() | Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 14 May n.p.: In the Sky Parlor at the Walnut Street Theatre things are conducted in very bad order and the female [...] visitors go it strong. |
1. (US) any form of headgear.
![]() | Nottingham Eve. Post 27 Aug. 2/6: His skypiece quite eclipsed anything by way of novelty ever seen upon the head of a human. | |
![]() | Barkeep Stories 32: [He] gets insulted w’en everybody in de place didn’t take off der sky-pieces w’en he come in. | |
![]() | TAD Lex. (1993) 74: Say boy. Kindly ast de mag ta remove de skypiece. | in Zwilling|
![]() | Sheffield Wkly Teleg. 28 Sept. 7/2: She lately owned a dream of a ‘sky-piece’ covered all over with violets. | |
![]() | Happy Hawkins 304: A sort of kettle turned upside down an’ covered with feathers for a sky-piece. | |
![]() | Ade’s Fables 24: She came out at 10.53 with her Sky Piece badly listed to Port and her toes flattened out. | ‘The New Fable of the Speedy Sprite’ in|
![]() | ‘Thieves’ Sl.’ Toronto Star 19 Jan. 2/5: HAT Skypiece. | |
![]() | Arizona Dly Star (Tucson, AZ) 11 Dec. 18/4: It was once the regal skypiece of an Arab potentate. | |
![]() | Hobo’s Hornbook 258: W’ile out on de Pennsy, from skypiece t’ shank, / De ’boes was all freezin’, wit no Christ to t’ank. | ‘De Night Before Christmas’ in|
![]() | Wild West Weekly 22 Oct. 🌐 ‘Off with ’em, Loney! Start with the sky-piece.’ Loney dropped the gray Stetson to the ground. | ‘Rope Meat’ in|
![]() | ‘Solid Meddlin’’ in People’s Voice (NY) 28 Mar. 31/1: That snazzy green feather that Frank (Esquire) Verlaine is sportin’ in his sky-piece is enuf to make him strut like a peacock. | |
![]() | N.Y. Herald Trib. 28 Feb. 47/1: In the jive vein there is ‘skypiece’ meaning a hat and ‘chalkstick,’ a cigarette. | |
![]() | M.A. Crane ‘Vox Bop’ in AS XXXIII:3 224: The cat [...] dons his [...] skypiece. | |
![]() | Doom Pussy 100: Extra-wide-brimmed hats (which the soldiers dubbed B.F. Skypieces). | |
![]() | Campus Sl. Nov. 5: sky piece – hat. | |
![]() | Dly News (NY) 18 Aug. 42/2: ‘Why didn’t yuz just sit your skypiece on your lap while watching the movie?’. |
2. (US) the head.
![]() | Bee (Earlington, NY) 12 Sept. 4: W’ile I’m gettin’ de jolt you’ll be gettin’ your skypiece busted. See? | |
![]() | A. Mutt in Blackbeard Compilation (1977) 40: I have made a careful examination of the defendant’s skypiece and find that he has bubbles on his thinktank. | |
![]() | Caldwell Trib. (ID) 4 Feb. 2/4: One reason [...] why I am able [...] to keep my sky-piece working in double shifts is because I am a moving picture fiend . | |
![]() | My Life in Prison 285: If y’r ain’t careful y’r’ll get a swelled skypiece. | |
![]() | Walnut Valley Times (El Dorado, KS) 11 Mar. 6/2: Engineers in dry dock plated the two halves together and zingo! They had a new boat. Nice work? Righto. Use your skypiece! |
1. a priest, a prison chaplain, a preacher, a missionary.
![]() | Harry Disney II 61: A man who was an accomplice was ‘in the same stable, don’t you know;’ racing not to win was ‘milking;’ a clergyman was ‘a sky pilot ’ [etc.] . | |
![]() | Under the Gridiron 43: I do not feel equal to a journey of three miles to hear the local sky-pilot hold forth. | |
![]() | Dublin U. Mag. 8960/1: I say, Harry, old fellow, I would not let that sky pilot have a walk over if I were you. [...] By Jove, if I'm ever in Parliament, which is not, likely, I'll bring in a bill for the suppression of curates. | |
![]() | Bulletin (Sydney) 9 Apr. 8/1: For some time past the only public entertainment in that city has been that provided by the ‘Salvation Army’ [...] The chief Sky Pilot is an attractive female of some seventy odd summers. | |
![]() | Peck’s Bad Boy and His Pa (1887) 102: After the minister had gone away [...] Pa said he had got enough feeling for one family, and he didn’t want no sky-sharp to help him. [Ibid.] 146: Look a-here you sky-pilot, this thing has gone far enough. | |
![]() | Fifty Years (2nd edn) II 240: I read a letter from a local parson [...] Poor dear innocent ‘Sky Pilot’! | |
![]() | Truth (Sydney) 11 Mar. 1/5: Possibly the reverential sky-pilot has only just woke up. | |
![]() | Daily Tel. 4 Oct. in (1909) 225/2: While some of the members of the Congregational Union were enquiring the way to the hall where refreshments were served, the doorkeeper shouted in a stentorian voice: ‘Sky-pilots’ beanfeast!’. | |
![]() | Wolfville 226: [It] keeps me rememberin’ what that sky scout says at the Pra’r-meetin’ about the action a gent gets by playin’ a good deed to win. | |
[ | ![]() | Houndsditch Day by Day 179: An ambitious and distinguished pilot to the upper blue had mysteriously ‘nobbled’ Moses]. |
![]() | ‘Dads Wayback’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 2 Nov. 3/3: ‘Fer people will trust er cove as sez he’s er pilot in er country they've never bin in, but won't take no notice of him in their own bush’. | |
![]() | Bulletin (Sydney) 4 Oct. 14/3: With quips and cranks Melba enlivened the afternoon, and had even the kirk pilots won over in the end. | |
![]() | Sun. Times (Perth) 23 Oct. 4/7: ‘Have you the license?’ asked the sky-pilot. | |
![]() | Spoilers 65: I dessay I could easy get a job, if I sucked up to some sky-pilot or some society for genteel ticketers. | |
![]() | Sun. Times (Perth) 23 Sept. 4s/4: The thort of some other sky-pilot gettin’ the threesplicin’ fees brought ’im round ter reason. | |
![]() | Bar-20 xxiii: You are like that sky-pilot over to Las Cruces — he preached agin killin’ things, which is all right for him, who didn’t have no cows. | |
![]() | N.Z. Truth 20 June 6/7: Of course he can’t help having a sky-pilot for a father. | |
![]() | Sun. Times (Perth) 30 Jan. 1st sect. 1/1: They Say [...] That Chidlow’s Well is dead weary of the local sky-pilot. | |
![]() | Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 172: You talk like a man up a tree, you holy sky-pilot. | |
![]() | Dew & Mildew 349: ‘Yer mealy-mugged sky-pilot’. | |
![]() | Truth (Sydney) 26 Jan. 12/6: We did have a devil dodger, / Pilot, who said clean and neat / That no place outside of blazes / Could compare with Whitfield-etreet. | |
![]() | Ulysses 298: And one or two sky pilots having an eye around that there was no goings on with the females, hitting below the belt. | |
![]() | Dict. of Aus. Words And Terms 🌐 PILOT — A clergyman. | |
![]() | Townsville Daily Bulletin (Qld) 12 Dec. 6s/5: The sky pilot swore that he could not perform the service for such a small amount. | |
![]() | Your Broadway & Mine 7 Mar. [synd. col.] A well-known up-town sky pilot will [...] start a new religion of his own. | |
![]() | N.Z. Truth 14 Nov. 6/4: Canon Henry Packe [...] is well known as one of the most tolerant and broad-minded of pilots. | |
![]() | Bully Hayes 4: That was his one and only ejaculation, after much carrying to and fro of sky pilots. | |
![]() | Und. Speaks n.p.: Sky pi, a minister. | |
![]() | Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 10: Sky-pilot: Clergyman. | |
![]() | Living Rough 206: To get a lousy flop and a bowl of stew you’d have to listen to the sky-pilot say his piece. | |
![]() | Big Spring 76: The sky pilots with the long coat and the whiskers and the sanctmonious look. | |
![]() | Hobohemia 22: Scarcely had the soul aviator (that was the name the mission preacher was known by) begun to hand out angel-food (and that was the name his sermon was known by) than not a few drowsed off to sleep. | |
![]() | Bang To Rights 174: The sky pilot perswaded him that he wasn’t Jesus. | |
![]() | Only Child (1970) 78: Praying was what the natives did when there was nothing to eat in the house, instead of going after the sky pilots with horse, foot, and artillery. | |
![]() | Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 53: Sky pilots are lucky havin’ them dog collars. At least they can enjoy a good chuck without having to tuck in their tie. | |
![]() | (con. 1930s–50s) Janey Mack, Me Shirt is Black 104: In slang the priest is the sky pilot. | |
![]() | Big Huey 253: Sky pilot (n) Chaplain. | |
![]() | Sweetwater Gunslinger 201 (1990) 203: ‘Let’s go ask the Sky-pilot to help us.’ The three pilots gathered outside Rabbi Freeman’s stateroom [...] Rabbi Freeman was the only Jewish chaplain on a carrier in the U.S. Navy. | |
![]() | Breakfast on Pluto 30: ‘Sex Mad Sky Pilot!’ ‘Fornicator!’ ‘The Adventures of Father Benny Rape!’. | |
![]() | Plainclothes Naked (2002) 123: Some sick fuckos pancaked the sky-pilot and left him for dead. | |
![]() | Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 169/1: sky pilot n. a prison chaplain. | |
[ | ![]() | http://goodmagic.com 🌐 Sky Grifter — A tent-revival evangelist of the more mercenary sort]. | ‘Carny Lingo’ in
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
![]() | Bulletin (Sydney) 26 July 13/3: Very noticeable about here at present are the Mormon elders kicking round. [...] All the other sky-pilot cadgers go to the native and ask straight out for the money in cash. Not so the Mormon. |
see separate entries.
(US) a wig or toupee.
![]() | Kingston Dly Freeman (NY) 17 May 8/2: [cartoon caption] That life story is as phony as that sky-rug he wears to cover his skull. | |
, | ![]() | DAS. |
see separate entries.
someone or something very high.
![]() | Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant. | |
![]() | Le Slang. |
In phrases
see under dive v.
see under grab v.
(US black) to keep one’s wits.
![]() | N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 21 Mar. 16: ‘Jackson, the trilly was rough, but I held my sky’. |
intoxicated by a drug.
![]() | Boss 373: He’s in the skies, so my plan for a talk right then is all off. | |
![]() | Und. Speaks n.p.: In the air, full of mariahuana [sic]. |
see under reach v.