Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also kipsy) a brothel; also attrib.; thus kip-keeper, a brothel-keeper, a madame.

1766		implied in tatter a kip
c.1785		‘Gary Own Naugh Glora’ in A. Carpenter Verse in Eng. in 18C Ireland (1998) 418: We beak windows and kip doors, / We beat the bullies, bawds and whores.
1900–10		in Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 92: KIP OR KIPSY: a brothel or house of ill fame.
1900		Truth (Sydney) 28 Oct. 5/5: Well rite there their [sic] are a kipsy, / Gaud forgive me folks aint blind.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 290: Mother kept a kip in Hardwicke street that used to be stravaging about the landings Bantam Lyons told me that was stopping there at two in the morning without a stitch on her, exposing her person, open to all comers, fair field and no favour.
c.1930		(ref. to 1898) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 277: It isn’t just nookie – what a girl sells is an illusion; the idea the john is some guy and she’s just crackers for his kind of kip work.
1954		B Kiely Honey Seems Bitter 49: They caught him in a kip [...] the true native Irish bordello.
1965		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Confessions 142: It was more a shebeen than a kip, kip being the Dublin word for a brothel.
1979		H. Leonard A Life (1981) Act I: It isn’t a decent inn, Mary. When you get close up, it’s a kip.
1994		(con. 1920s–30s) K.C. Kearns Dublin Tenement Life 210: Now we didn’t call them ‘madams’, the outsiders called them madams. We called them ‘kip-keepers’ [...] Like my mother used to say, ‘Oh, she’s a kip-keeper’ and that was an awful thing. Very rarely you’d hear of a ‘brothel’, it was a ‘kip’.
2017		L. McInerney Blood Miracles 86: ‘I don’t give a shit why you’re living in a kip’.

2. (also kip-down) a bed.

1859		Matsell Vocabulum.
1879		‘Autobiog. of a Thief’ in Macmillan’s Mag. (London) XL 501: I went home, turned into kip (bed), and could not get up for two or three days.
1885		Dly Gaz. for Middlesborough 6 Nov. 3/4: Looking for a doss, old pals? ’Cos if you are yer won’t get a better kip in the smoke than at Johnny’s-down-the-steps.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 45: ‘But I say, Blower, how about letty?’ ‘Kip for you two, eh?’.
1896		F. Hutcheson Barkeep Stories 23: ‘I don’t feel like goin’ t’ kip right away’.
1905		A. Binstead Mop Fair 136: There was only one bedroom, too, but it had a brace o’ kips in it.
1918		Dagger [London] Dec. I 25/2: When at last the final post has been driven home [...] we turn into ‘kip’ tired, but proud.
1929		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 12 Feb. 5/3: I want to get some money for a kip down.
1929		(con. 1916) F. Manning Her Privates We (1986) 29: He expects me to go to kip in the fuckin’ dark, I suppose?
1940		J.H. O’Hara Pal Joey 108: Mike Shortridge and his little 2 wks old bride were in the kip.
1944		J. Cary Horse’s Mouth (1948) 269: You gave me a shilling once for my kip when I was trying to sleep on a bench down by Millbank.
1959		F. Durbridge Time of Day (1989) 90: Then get in kip. You’ll be as right as rain soon.
1962		F. Norman Guntz 13: My temples throbbed at the thought of [...] getting into kip with her.
1971		M. Novotny Kings Road 209: Helen’s still in the kip [...] Go and kick her out of bed.
1994		I. Welsh ‘The Granton Star Cause’ Acid House 131: Ah’m away tae ma fuckin kip, he wheezed.
2006		D. Seabrook Jack of Jumps (2007) 203: You could always get a free kip at Mary’s.
2011		J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 278: He’d take a dim view of this, us being in the kip.
2015		I. Welsh Decent Ride 115: Wir lying thaire in the kip, n wi order a boatil ay rid wino.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 181: The kid’s dirty [...] I think he wanted to catch Pepper in the kip with his sister.

3. (also kip-down) sleep, a nap; thus akip, asleep.

1876		Aris’s Birmingham Gaz. 8 July 8/1: Hadley said, ‘That’s the place for you [...] (pointing to a lodging house). ‘That’s about your strength; you can have a “kip” for 3d’.
1917		A.G. Empey Over the Top ‘Tommy’s Dict. of the Trenches’ 296: ‘Kip.’ Tommy’s term for ‘sleep.’ He also calls his bed his ‘kip’.
1927		(con. WW1) P. MacDonald Patrol 28: ‘That’ll do. All to kip now’.
1936		J. Curtis Gilt Kid 46: You don’t want to spoil your kip on your first night by having to share it with a fat old steamer.
1940		E. O’Neill Iceman Cometh Act I: I’m tired as hell. A couple of hours good kip will fix me.
1950		C. Harris Three-Ha’Pence to the Angel 89: Thought you was gona get a bit o’ kip in.
1950		Western Gaz. 17 Feb. 8/5: After drinking eight pints he tried several car doors with the intention of a having a "kip down’.
1964		P. Terson Night to Make the Angels Weep (1967) I ii: Fancy a quiet kip do you whilst the train jogs on?
1977		(con. 1960s) Nicholson & Smith Spend, Spend, Spend (1978) 88: You go up to your room and get some kip.
1984		B. Ellem Doing Time 192: kip: sleep.
1986		F. Taylor Auf Wiedersehen Pet Two 29: Who’s for a good night’s kip?
1986		J. Sullivan ‘The Miracle of Peckham’ Only Fools and Horses [TV script] I was fast akip I was.
1995		D. Lodge Therapy (1996) 31: I’ll go back to bed and see if I can get a few hours’ kip before sparrowfart.
1996		P. Howard The Joy (2015) [ebook] I manage to get a bit more kip.
2002		J. Cameron Hell on Hoe Street 173: First off I got to get some kip.
2012		A. Bergen ‘Dread Fellow Churls’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] It’d started out with a medicated kip some twelve hours before.
2018		C. Hammer Scrublands [ebook] ‘After a room? [...] Quick kip or overnight?’ .
2018		I. Welsh Dead Man’s Trousers 77: I drift off intae a fucking wierd kip.

4. the place where one sleeps, one’s home.

1899		J. Flynt Tramping with Tramps 251: It’s been arranged that any man who will get himself vaccinated can have a week’s kip free.
1906		E. Pugh Spoilers 21: I’ll ’ave him to live wi’ me, though [...] soon as I can find a kip.
1907		Sun. Times (Perth) 20 Jan. 4/7: But whether from a social slip / They fired old Adam from his kip, / He got there just the same!
1910		‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Bedrooms’ Sporting Times 15 Oct. 2/3: In a ‘snoozer’ that’s worth twenty-five thousand pound / You would say there’s no room for the pip / Yet a man, ’mid its splendour, might not sleep so sound / As a tramp in a fourpenny ‘kip’.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 12: What sort of a kip is this?
1933		‘George Orwell’ Down and Out in Complete Works I (1986) 131: Want a kip? That’ll be a ’og, guv’nor.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 224: I had a kind of liking for the old kip.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 806: kip – A bed or a place to sleep.
1979		‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 39: She was a throughbred, my woman! She stacked up long scratch in the kip for me.
2000		J. Hawes Dead Long Enough 77: The Wop, who has a truly ghastly little kip somewhere up wherever the hell it is.

5. (also kipp) a lodging house, a hotel room, an institutional home for the homeless, thus keeper of the kip, a lodging house proprietor; also attrib.

1886		H. Goldsmid Dottings of a Dosser 45: ‘Where do you live?’ [...] ‘In a kip – doss – I mean lodgin’-’ouse, sir.’.
1896		M. Williams Round London 38: I was completely ignorant of the sort of life that was led in ‘kips’ or ‘doss-houses’.
1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Sept. 29/2: They’s heaps er good tips / Fur ter pick up at Pen, / An’, roundin’ the kips, / Yer kin pump ’em, an’ then / Yer off ter the demons.
1912		E. Pugh City Of The World 255: It is past midnight now, and every cubicle is filled in the last ‘kip’ we visit.
1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 410: Kipp. Person sleeping in a building. Also, a lodging house.
1931		E. Blair letter 27 Aug. in Complete Works (1998) X 212: I am writing this in a lodging house. It is a 7d. kip — & looks it.
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 6: Kip: Night’s lodging.
1950		P. Hoskins No Hiding Place! 191/1: Keeper of the Kip. Lodging-house proprietor.
1955		J.P. Donleavy Ginger Man (1958) 165: I told the manager to stuff his kip up his hole.
1960		A. Burgess Doctor Is Sick (1972) 213: Lend me a quid, will you? [...] For a kip for the night.
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 190: Kip, the Common lodging house.
1981		(con. 1906) A. Harding in Samuel East End Und. 191: They didn’t have their kip money and they were spending the night on the pavement.
1992		P. McCabe Butcher Boy (1993) 33: He was always the same, from the minute we were dumped in that Belfast kip.
2014		T. Black Artefacts of the Dead [ebook] ‘Where the hell is he going?’ said McAlister. ‘Well, it’s not to any kip-house or B& B’.

6. (Anglo-Irish) a job.

1922		Joyce Ulysses 11: I get paid this morning, Stephen said. / The school kip? Buck Mulligan said. How much?
1980		(con. 1940s) O. Manning Sum of Things 391: Afore I come to this kip, all I ever done was shovel coal.

7. (US Und.) a nightwatchman.

1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 75: The safe man had to look out for the ‘kip.’ A kip is some one who sleeps in a store or immediately overhead who is likely to hear the noise.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 117: Kip. – [...] a night watchman.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 117/2: Kip.[...] 3. (Central and Western U.S. chiefly) A night watchman, especially one who sleeps on the premises.

8. (mainly Irish) any form of place, building.

1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 9 July 4/8: Should a Christian Clergyman Own a Pak-a-Pu Kip.
1935		S. Horler London’s Und. 22: Voyageurs [...] drift in to this ‘kip’ to eat, drink, sleep, hear the latest news concerning their kind, and to plan fresh crimes.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 45: The populace [...] disapproved of having the kip burned about their ears.
1965		L. Dunne Goodbye to The Hill (1966) 168: Come on, kid, let’s get out of this kip.
1973		H. Leonard Da (1981) Act II: I won’t leave a stick or stone standing in the kip.
1988		R. Doyle Commitments 77: The community centre? – Yeah. – Tha’ kip!
1998		P. McCabe Breakfast on Pluto 20: The sooner they blow this kip up and be done with it, the better!
2004		P. Howard PS, I Scored the Bridesmaids 105: Practically coughing a lung up what with all the shite that’s in the air in this kip.

9. in fig. use of senses 1 and 5, a ill-kept room.

1986		R.G. Barrett Godson 48: I‘ am not staying in that...kip’.
2013		T. Black Ringer [ebook] n.p.: A greasy layer of slop, noodles and sweetcorn covers a fair stretch of the already manky carpet now as I stand there fuming, just pure raging at the kip of the joint.

10. (UK Und.) anywhere, e.g. a public house, frequented by criminals.

2007

N. ‘Razor’ Smith Raiders 167: It [i.e. a public house] is probably perfectly respectable these days, it was then a kip. A lot of pimps and prostitutes [...] used to get it there .