Green’s Dictionary of Slang

see separate entry.

1. (US black) a ‘corner-boy’.

1969		H. Rap Brown Die, Nigger Die! 66: If you can make the Black university students seem like they’re different and better than, say, what they call the ‘block boys,’ then you can keep ’em confused and fighting.
1970		Current Sl. V:2 5: Block boy, n. A youth who hangs out at the corner or looks as if he would.
2008		R.T. Vacca [bk title] Block Boy: Memories of Another Time and Place.

2. a street youth, a ‘gangsta’ or ‘b-boy’.

2004

A. Zwicky posting at ADS-L 1 May 🌐 B-boy or banjee/banji/banjie boy, or block boy, or homeboy, or homie [...] They are the boyz who are the true hip-hopsters, the gangstas, the menaces 2 and of society.

see separate entries.

(US Und.) a variety of the ‘shell game’ employing small boxes.

1940

D. Maurer Big Con 290: block game. The three-shell game played with small hollow boxes, weighted on the top. Also the blocks, the boxes, the dinks, the hinks, the nuts, the peeks, the shells.

see separate entries.

1. (also run the block) to promenade along a variety of fashionable blocks or stretches of city street; thus the Block, Collins Street; Blockite, a fashionable individual, given to such a promenade.

1854		J.F. Hogan ‘It’s Nice To Do the Block’ 🎵 For it is so nice to do the block / In the afternoon at four o’clock; / Oh! we like nothing better / I assure you to the letter / Than ev’ry afternoon to do the block.
1869		M. Clarke Peripatetic Philosopher 13: If our Victorian youth showed their appreciation for domestic virtues, Victorian womanhood would ‘do the Block’ less frequently.
1875		R. & F. Hill What We Saw in Aus. 267: To ‘do the block’ corresponds in Melbourne to driving in Hyde Park.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 11 Apr. 16/1: Pretty block-maiden, we don’t mind admitting it, / We admire beauty as much as we can; [...] Still, there are higher – yes, darling, you know there are – / Higher ambitions than ‘doing the block’.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 2 Aug. 14/2: The ladies who come into town laden with fiddle-cases are not going to a music-master’s – any more than the swells who do the Block carrying tennis-bats to keep up their social positions are going to play lawn-tennis. Those ladies are shopping’.
1892		H. Nisbet Bushranger’s Sweetheart 35: I [...] will put you up to everything, from Fan-Tan in Little Burke Street to running the block in Collins Street.
1904		‘Dads Wayback’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 31 Jan. 3/5: ‘A gal could do the block with a cabbage leaf fer a straight-front corsit, an’ meet her bloke wearin’ a watermelin hat’.
1909		N.Z. Truth 30 Jan. 5/6: Lord Bob Lauder [...] and Lady Lauder are great cobbers and frequently can be seen ‘doing the block’ on Lambton-quay, Wellington.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 18 Aug. 22/2: I saw on the head of a Blockite a hat that was a sheer half-acre of Old Man Plain of royal blue plush. (Flatness is smartness in hats.) A rival stroller showed several inches of bright blue spats to her boot.
1915		C.J. Dennis ‘Ginger’s Cobber’ in Bulletin (Sydney) 22 July 6/3: It’s this noo pal uv ’is that tickles me; / ’E’s got a mumma, an’ ’is name is Keith. / A Knut upon the Block ’e used to be, / ’Ome ’ere; the sort that flashes Chiner teeth, / An’ wears ’ot socks, an’ torks a lot o’ guff; / But Ginger say’s they’re cobbers till they snuff.
1918		R.H. Knyvett ‘Over There’ with the Australians 254: I would go into the city, do the block, have afternoon tea [...] and as there seemed nothing else to be done, would return to the hospital.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 139: She was doing the Block and I fell in alongside.
1963		R. McGregor-Hastie Compleat Migrant 105: Block, the: the main street.

2. in fig. use, to show off, to gain acclaim.

1885

Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Aug. 6/4: An old literary friend, Bertha M. Clay, has ‘glided.’ Many a tale of hers [...] has done the block in the country Press, and in a certain evening paper in Sydney.

(orig. US) to gain experience; esp. in phr. X has been around the block (a few times), X is experienced, esp. sexually.

1952		W.R. Burnett Little Men, Big World 67: Can you imagine a knocked-out broad like that? Good kid. Sure. But she’s been round the wheel, brother.
1961		F. Kohner Gidget Goes Hawaiian 109: Your daughter, Professor, has been around the block – not once – but many times.
1971		E. Wilson Show Business Nobody Knows 40: Colonel Parker, Elvis’s manager, carved out an equivalent or better deal than even Barbra [Streisand] got because he’s been around those curves more years than has Barbra’s manager, Marty Ehrlichman.
1977		L. Heinemann Close Quarters (1987) 35: Claymore Face [...] looked like she’d been around the block a couple of times herself.
1999		Guardian G2 15 Mar. 4: The ironically weary air of one who has been around the block a few times.
2000		G. Pelecanos Shame the Devil 40: From his appearance, I’d say that guy’s been a round the block a few times.
2005		P. Howard Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress 8: She was a very old nineteen, definitely been around the old block more than once.
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 22: Loose as they come [...] Looks like she’s been around the block a few thousand times.
2013		K. Sampson Killing Pool 173: Ol’ Evan been round the block and then some, and I here to tell you I can smell a rotter a hundred yards away.
2020		G. Armstrong Young Team 10: [M]a big bro’s been roon the block a few times.

1. in business.

1894		Truth (Sydney) 15 July 2/7: To the many attractive business houses ‘On the Block’ has been recently added ‘The Great’ EL Tailors, No 416 George-street [...] the best-appointed Tailoring house in the colonies.
1899–1900		C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 172: Two of the bookies who’d laid against me [...] weren’t on the block any more that year.
1951		D. Stivens Jimmy Brockett 196: I could never see Bill ever being one of the best-dressed blokes on the Block.

2. working as a street prostitute.

1890		E. Magie cited in lithub.com 02/09/2020 🌐 Of course, I am a white slave [but] I am not on the block physically.
1986–7		Maledicta IX 150: The original argot of prostitution includes some words and phrases which have gained wider currency and some which have not […] on the block (in business).

3. (US black campus) hanging out in a specific meeting place.

1947		M.H. Boulware Jive and Sl. n.p.: On the block ... Boy’s hang-out.
1981		Eble Campus Sl. Fall 5: on the yard/on the block – where people meet on campus.

4. in poverty; among the working-class.

1970

B. Seale Seize the Time 41: Huey P. Newton was raised up righteously on the block.

1. (US) of a pimp, to launch a woman into a career as a prostitute.

1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 200: There were a lot of guys trying to get young girls started on drugs so that they could put them on the corner.
1967		C. Himes ‘Tang’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 411: ‘Ain’t I always done what’s best?’ ‘Yeah, put me on the block to sell my black pussy to poor white trash.’.
1972		E. Folb Urban Black Argot 143: Put Her on the Block to have a female working for one as a prostitute.
1980		E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 118: Teenage vernacular is heavily laced with expressions borrowed from the pimp’s vocabulary. Terms like [...] turn someone out, put her on the block. [Ibid.] 251: put her on the corner Have a female working for a male as his prostitute [Ibid.] 133: Put ’er on d’ co’ner, so she can sit her stuff and bring my money home!

2. (N.Z.) to subject a woman (or a homosexual man) to gang rape.

1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 156: If he needs money, he can sell his jodie [...] to the highest bidder. This auctioning is putting a kid on the block.
1973		Truth (Wellington) 4 Dec. 5: Later she heard the boys talking about ‘putting a girl on the block’. Mr Rowan: What does that expression mean to you? Witness: It’s when a whole heap of jokers have intercourse with one girl [DNZE].
1982		G. Newbold Big Huey 131: One time a bunch of gang members [...] decided they were going to put her [i.e. a prison homosexual] on the block.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 25: to put/go on the block.

to procrastinate.

2008

T. Piccirilli Fever Kill 85: We’re gonna run around the block for another couple of days, and then [...] we’ll see what happens.