Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also gee along, gee over) to encourage, to persuade, to incite, esp. when working as a showman’s or market-trader’s assistant.

[1772		Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 338: She gave her tits a smack, / And pull’d the reins to keep ’em back, / But all the while they turn’d ’em, she / Kept crying Gee, plague rot ye, gee!].
1866		C.H. Smith Bill Arp 151: Sumner and Satin and [...] other like gentlemen who keep hollerin at him and crackin his whip and confusin his idees, so that sometimes we don’t know whether he’s gee-in or haw-in.
1900		Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Jan. 14/2: Wondering how they would greet each other, I gently touched the cockroach’s near-side feeler with a twig and luckily gee-d him over straight for the spider.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 78: To gee up the customers or mugs, to encourage or start to buy or bet.
1906		Truth (Wellington) 21 July 1: Pure-Boy Bligh has denied on the platform that he is ‘geeing’ for the doctors. Anyhow, the doctors are geeing for Bligh [DNZE].
1930		‘Leslie Charteris’ Enter the Saint 20: We were geeing him along very nicely [...] and we’d let him take fifty off us.
1936		J. Curtis Gilt Kid 231: He could flash a few oncers before her eyes if he wanted to gee her up.
1941		K. Tennant Battlers 141: I’m geeing for him, and I’ll fix it.
1958		F. Norman in Encounter Nov. in Norman’s London (1969) 49: Before I knew what had happened they had geed me up into writing an article.
1979		F. Norman Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 66: She was geeing herself up for a big over-acted scene.
1980		T. Lewis GBH 66: Of course it was academic, just part of a general geeing up process in our mind games.
1992		M. Coleman Fatty 50: We’d gee each other up when things got tough.
1999		K. Sampson Powder 344: He eyed the tall, slender, painted gargoyle and swallowed hard, geeing himself up.
2007		N. ‘Razor’ Smith Raiders 18: Cracking jokes, telling stories and generally geeing the two trainee turnkeys up.

2. to act as an agent provocateur, esp. when using entrapment for sexual crimes.

1932		E. Blair ‘Clink’ in Complete Works X (1998) 256: Detective Smith knows how to gee; / Tell him he’s a cunt from me.
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 5: Tell lies.

3. to provoke trouble deliberately, to tease maliciously, to deceive; thus geed up, furious, very angry.

1936		J. Curtis Gilt Kid 243: ‘You may be a bargainer, Ken, but you can’t gee me up all that.’ ‘Who said I was geeing?’.
1956		J. Curtis Look Long Upon a Monkey 29: You had to give him one of the real reasons you wanted him and gee him up at the same time.
1958		(con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 201: Only geeing you, Paddy.
1967		‘Whisper All Aussie Dict.’ in Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxv 6/1: gee up: To kid a person along to make an ass of him.
1983		A. Payne ‘Get Daley!’ Minder [TV script] 19: Are you geeing me up, you long-haired animal?
1984		B. Ellem Doing Time 190: gee: to set someone up in a joking way, to have him on.
1990		Tupper & Wortley Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Gee. To tease or mislead. It is a common expression in prison that ‘if you can be geed you can be fucked’, that is to say, unless you keep your wits about you, you are vulnerable. [Ibid.] Gee-up. To incite or provoke someone to action.

4. (orig. UK prison) to inform (against a fellow prisoner).

1979		(con. 1940s) G. Stewart Leveller 91: ‘Bob, for Christ’s sake, Green’s a security walloper,’ I gee’d.
1992		in R. Graef Living Dangerously 178: Certain people have started to gee (grass) on their friends.

5. to give up, to surrender [may be SE give up, to hand over].

1997

C. Newland Scholar 143: How I know you won’t gee me up to de Rads dem?