Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) a urinal; a lavatory.

1970		D. Ponicsan Last Detail 174: Dropping pennies in the pisser.
1974		(con. 1940s) E. Thompson Tattoo (1977) 55: They bracketed a middle-aged man at the pisser.
1986		T. Winton That Eye, The Sky 121: Another gang of kids push some melon into the pisser.
1991		B. Hamper Rivethead (1992) 66: When it got crowded in there [...] you sometimes had to give old Lightnin’ a little nudge in order to find some elbow room at the pisser.
2005		C. Buzzell My War (2006) 22: I came out of the pisser with the test tube of my own piss.
2009		R. Milward Ten Storey Love Song 148: GergiekneelsonthepisserwhileBobbydoesheruptheshitter.
2012		(con. 1943) G.S. Manson Coorparoo Blues [ebook] [H]e sauntered through the pisser and into the pub.
2013		T. Black Ringer [ebook] n.p.: Davie Geddes will be looking for Monique if it stays in the pisser for much longer.
2016		T. Robinson Rough Trade [ebook] ‘Don’t enter any of my nightclubs again, Mr. Malone, even to use the pisser’.

(b) the penis.

1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1941		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 233: While pissing on deck, an old boatswain / Fell asleep, and his pisser got frozen.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1987		(con. 1967) E. Spencer Welcome to Vietnam (1989) 79: Before you can react it [i.e. a leech] would climb right in your pisser.
1999		Bug (Aus.) 29 June 🌐 Two of the game’s finest being put through the disciplinary mincer for minor indiscretions – one being too pissed, the other showing too much of his pisser.
2012		K. Brown Kingdom Come’ in C. Rhatigan and N. Bird (eds) Pulp Ink 2 [ebook] The morning had been [...] hotter than a blistered pisser in a pepper patch .

(c) the vagina.

1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
1974		G.F. Newman You Flash Bastard 197: Get your knickers down, let’s see your pisser.
1986–7		Maledicta IX 161: In the U.K. one may hear of [...] piss money against the wall (squander), piss pins and needles (from the sting of gonorrheal infection), pisser (vagina, or anything unpleasant), pissing while (a moment), etc.

(d) one who urinates.

[1712		Pope ‘Duke upon Duke’ Misc. II (1751) 110: Mean Time on ev’ry Pissing-Post / Paste we this Recreant’s Name, / So that each Pisser-by shall read / And piss against the same].
1927		‘J.M. Hall’ Anecdota Americana I 50: I’ve had twelve pissers, and you’re the third shit to come in.
1929		E. Dahlberg Bottom Dogs 39: Miss Price took care of the little orphans, and saw to it that rubber sheets were put on the beds of those who wet themselves.[...] as soon as a newcomer got in, she said, she could tell for certain whether he was a little pisser or not.
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 149: There had been a sudden influx of last minute pissers before they went to bed.
1964		J. Baldwin Blues for Mister Charlie 19: Hey old pisser [...] I expect you to control your bladder like a gentleman whenever your Papa’s got you on his knee.
1978		H. Selby Jr Requiem for a Dream (1987) 47: Your old ladys a pisser man.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 209: Jayzuss [...] you’re a real pisser, aren’t yo.
1995		A. Higgins Donkey’s Years 21: Their powerful pee curved out like rainbows [...] the three pissers smiling to themselves.
2000		S. Maloney Big Ask 45: ‘You pervert,’ gasped the evicted pisser.

(e) a very unpleasant place.

1989

(con. 1950s–60s) in G. Tremlett Little Legs 65: It [i.e. a hotel] was a pisser, worse than a dosshouse.

(f) (US prison) solitary confinement.

1971–2

C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 211: pisser, n. – solitary confinement.

(g) a public house.

1989		M. Amis London Fields 352: Basically, Michael, I’m just the sort of guy who just likes to meet up with his mates down the pisser. Down the drinker. Down the pub.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.

(h) (Aus.) a (male) cicada.

1980		C. James Unreliable Memoirs 221: The ordinary cicada was called a pisser because he squirted mud at you.
2003		Australian Word Map 🌐 pisser, a male cicada: When I flooded the cicada hole I got a pisser.

(i) a drunkard.

1989

M. Amis London Fields 457: There’s no pub. Don’t you think we have enough grief already, Keith. Without wheeling a couple of hundred pissers in and out of here.

(j) (Irish) a heavy drinking session.

2001

G. Coughlan Everyday Eng. and Sl. 🌐 Pisser (n): going out for a night of big drinking.

(a) (also pisseroo) an extraordinary person or thing.

1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 158/1: Pisser. Any extraordinary person or thing; anything affording extreme satisfaction or dissatisfaction; an unusual occurrence or predicament. [...] Pisseroo. An emphatic variant of pisser.
1953		A.J. Liebling Honest Rainmaker (1991) 19: Joe [...] if I say so myself this is a pisseur.
1962		C. Perry Portrait of a Young Man Drowning (1963) 24: Tim McCoy [...] Nobody can outdraw him. He’s a real pisseroo.
1963		in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 18: I tell you I never dream. But this – a real pisser.
1972		D. Jenkins Semi-Tough 15: I have carved out a special place for myself in football history by being a white pisser. Shake Tiller has said that if I was black I would not be thought of so much as any kind of hell.
1981		M. Baker Nam (1982) 22: This guy here in the middle is my buddy Geezer [...] Boy, he was a pisser.
1998		T. Fontana & S. Jablonski ‘Great Men’ Oz ser. 2 ep. 3 [TV script] You’d like my wife, she’s a real pisser.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 584: RMDJ: That one guard was a pisser. Remember him? Bob Relyea. NDK: Bob the Brain. Jimmy called him that.
2001		S. King Dreamcatcher 137: The actual muff of an actual girl from town [...] that would be a fuckin pisser.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 30: ‘Mr Crowley, you’re a pisser’.
2021		‘Aidan Truhen’ Seven Demons 96: ‘I am in a pisser of a mood’.

(b) a difficult or distasteful event or task, an unpleasant person.

1950		K. Amis letter 27 Nov. in Leader (2000) 249: Michael Hamburger is a frothless pisser.
1966		R. Stone Hall of Mirrors (1987) 44: It’s a beautiful piece of music [...] It must be a pisser to play.
1977		L. Heinemann Close Quarters (1987) 240: Wasn’t that [i.e. a battle] a pisser?
1986		F. Taylor Auf Wiedersehen Pet Two 100: Bit of a pisser, though, innit?
1991		C. Hiaasen Native Tongue 307: God, she was a pisser.
1992		G. Disher Paydirt [ebook] ‘That [i.e. some form of blunder] would be a pisser’.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 449: Be a bit uvver pissa if it is [dud], tho; its not sow much tha money spent as that fuckin disappointment.
2001		S. King Dreamcatcher 679: ‘I lost the hot dogs.’ ‘What a fuckin pisser.’.
2014		T.M. Simmler ‘Suicide Chump’ in ThugLit July [ebook] ‘Mental crack-up and post-traumatic stress disorder [...] quite the pisser’.
2016		Guardian 30 June 🌐 The pisser for Boris is that he now can’t even contemplate having Michael beaten up.

(c) a bloke, a chap, esp. one who is tough and purposeful.

1930		(con. 1917) ‘W.W. Windstaff’ ‘A Flier’s War’ in Longstreet Canvas Falcons (1970) 283: Poor little pissers, so game and so scared, rosy-cheeked.
1955		B. Schulberg On the Waterfront (1964) 121: How thankful we should be to Johnny Friendly for bein’ such a pisser of a labour leader.
1972		D. Jenkins Semi-Tough 24: Dreamer Tatum is what we call a pisser. I mean that sumbitch will make your helmet ring when he puts it on you.
1989		Pileggi & Scorsese Goodfellas [film script] 1: He’s a little pisser. I’ve known all my life.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 122: That Tyrone, he’s a pisser. You did the Casitas Youth Camp with him, didn’t you?

(d) something or someone considered hilariously funny.

1943		‘Some Amer. Idioms from the Yiddish’ in AS XVIII:1 Feb. 45: As they [i.e. New Yorkers] use it, ‘pisser’ denotes a wag or ‘card,’ a ‘corker,’ or a screamingly funny joke or prank, a ‘hot one.’.
1964		H. Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 87: Smilin all over the goddam place and the strap of his hat under his chin. I tellya man, it was a pissa.
1971		Current Sl. V:4 17: Pisser, n. Something agreeable or humorous.
1981		M. Baker Nam (1982) 123: The pisser of the whole thing was that the next week the newspapers reported on this small village [...] that the North Vietnamese overran and destroyed all seventy inhabitants.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 413: Abe ho-ho-ho’d, cuffed his arm oh-you-kid. ‘You’re a pisser.’.
2000		B. Wiprud Sleep with the Fishes 37: These yokels were a pisser.
2023		F. Bill Back to the Dirt 151: And the pisser of it was, no one knew he’d paid Miles’s camp a visit.