wide adj.
1. (also wide-oh) ‘sharp’; also as adv. (see cite 1914).
Monsieur Mallet 13: ‘Hi! hi! You’re wide!’ – said Jerry with a leer. | ||
, , | Sl. Dict. | |
‘Autobiog. of a Thief’ in Macmillan’s Mag. XL 502: I got in company with some of the widest (cleverest) people in London. | ||
Music Hall & Theatre Rev. 16 Feb. 13/1: ‘Never in this Wide Wide World.’ We like the title, but can say the world is too wide for some of us. | ||
‘’Arry on Chivalry’ in Punch 20 July 177: The modern young man must be wide-oh! he’s never a spoon or a flat. | ||
Hooligan Nights 88: Lunnun’s a very wide place, an’ there’s some wide people in it. | ||
Sporting Times 3 Nov. 1/4: She’d got her napper screwed on right, and, being very wide, / She learnt how to do typewriting, then she put on lots of side. | ‘Corinna’s Courage’||
Sun. Times (Perth) 26 Jan. 4/8: Wide Mister, snide Mister Geary. | ||
Everlasting Mercy 3: Silas Jones, that bookie wide, / Will make a purse five pounds a side. | ||
Abie the Agent 21 Apr. [synd. cartoon strip] We got to hammer up Benny Sparkbaum’s ‘Collapsibles’ [...] Watch the game — be wide waked up. | ||
Human Side of Crook and Convict Life 179: Yankee Smith — or ‘Chicago’ Smith, is a ‘wide’ man, a man who never speaks until he has made sure that no one can over-hear. | ||
Rough Stuff 12: I met the clerk of the hotel who looked a very wide lad, a typical gangster. | ||
Night and the City 259: Some people think I’m a mug, but I’m pretty wide all the same. | ||
An Indiscreet Guide to Soho 113: They divide humanity into two classes, ‘wide’ (smart in the criminal sense). | ||
Look Long Upon a Monkey 26: The real wide man kidded to be soft till he was ready to have it off. | ||
Plays: 3 (1994) II ii: No, babies are wide, Har, babies are shrewd. Well, they aren’t fools. | Sanctuary Lamp in||
Glue 44: Dinnae git fuckin wide wi me, hen. | ||
Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress 259: Ah, don’t worry, Rosser, I’m woyid. | ||
Panopticon (2013) 18: They thought i was being wide. | ||
(con. 1980s) Skagboys 65: He’s a wide cunt. | ||
May God Forgive 97: ‘No more fucking wide stuff [...] I’ll handle any bother’. |
2. lax, loose, immoral.
Child of the Jago (1982) 50: ’E’s as wide as Broad Street. |
3. (Scot.) stupid, foolish.
Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 8 Sept. 3/2: He’s so wide that if it were raining soup the poor boob would be running round with a fork. |
4. aware of.
They Drive by Night 24: He was as wide a boy as they made them. Just to prove it he walked across the road in and out of the traffic half a dozen or so times. | ||
An Indiscreet Guide to Soho 49: Another lad is ‘Biff,’ who talks big out of the corner of his mouth about [...] how ‘wide’ he is in all matters of the world. | ||
Look Long Upon a Monkey 186: He had to show the swede-bashing sods he was wide and knew his graft. | ||
(con. 1920s) Burglar to the Nobility 13: I could tell by his laugh he was wide to what he had given me. | ||
Trainspotting 150: His heart sank, expecting the ah’m-wide-fir-your-game-cunt line when they were alone. | ||
Blood Miracles : ‘Young wans? You wouldn’t be wide to them’. | ||
Hitmen 217: ‘What happened to this fella [i.e. a designated victim] being brought to us?’ [...] ‘It’s not happening [...] He’s wide to it’. |
5. (Irish) careful.
(con. 1930s) Death of an Irish Town 21: A rager blone – four horses and two sprassies. Wide with the makes. Still. (In translation: ‘A country woman – four half crowns and two sixpences ... she’s careful with her money’). | ||
Everyday Eng. and Sl. 🌐 Be wide (phr): be careful. Be dog wide (phr): be extra vigilant. |
In derivatives
1. perspicacity, intelligence.
Sporting Times 18 Jan. 1: A youthful sprig of the nobility [...] had inherited all the paternal possessions, barring wideness. | ‘On the Shelf and Off It’||
Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 174: Audrey with her wideness, her snappy way of dressing. |
2. audacity.
Glue 96: These wankers widnae huv that brains tae think ay it or the wideness tae dae it. |
see separate entries.
In compounds
see separate entry.
a minor villain, often dabbling in ‘get-rich-quick’ schemes; also attrib.
Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 106: They were all Wide Boys, and only Mugs worked and saved money. | ||
Indiscreet Guide to Soho 14: The ‘wide boy’ with money burning in his pocket acquires a taste for good living. | ||
Fings I i: Tosher comes in. He is the ponce, wide boy, big mouth, coward, humorist, flash dresser, all in one. | ||
Dream of Peter Mann Act III: Misers! Whores! Wideboys or Jokers! | ||
Inside Mr Enderby in Complete Enderby (2002) 69: There were criminal-looking coppers there, with wide-boy tashes. | ||
You Flash Bastard 201: Howell was the draughtsman, a new breed of criminal, one of the truly wide boys. | ||
Is That It? 109: He was a likeable, shrewd young wide-boy with a large American car. | ||
Yes We have No 164: He is a man of parts [...] street chronicler, wide-boy. | ||
Guardian Guide 8–14 Jan. 52: His glowing perma-tan and super-sharp, wide-boy whistles. | ||
Something Fishy (2006) 24: An old boy, a wide boy and a bean counter. | ||
Apples (2023) 75: [A]ll these wide-boys he knew from school. | ||
Killing Pool 45: I sunk myself in with the expat community [...] and, basically, flushed the laughable wide boy out. | ||
Bloody January 195: ‘Just another wide boy with a badge’. | ||
April Dead 15: [A]n angry and pissed-up Greenock Wide Boy. |
1. (also wide chump, wide con) a swindler, a con-man.
Cheapjack 243: ‘Daisy’s only just come out of stir,’ said Lionel. ‘I bet she’s got gelt out of the warders. What a woman! [...] She’s what I call a wide chump.’. | ||
Wide Boys Never Work (1938) 74: He was a wide man, with an eye for a snip and a mug to take it that amounted almost to genius. | ||
Decade 317: The wide cons, the hustlers, the wise broads are steering clear of him. |
2. (UK Und.) a professional thief.
Tramp at Anchor 98: A Wide man — i.e. a professional thief — would take the push, and the probable sorting-out. |
In phrases
to get the better of.
(con. mid-1960s) Glasgow Gang Observed 237: Wide, as in ‘to come wide’ – to get the better of, to outsmart. |
(Aus.) looking foolish.
Sun. Times (Perth) 9 Mar. 7/4: If someone makes a fool of himself, the digger describes him as ‘gone to the wide,’ or ‘gone to the races’. |
reasonably intelligent, aware of what goes on and thus, in certain contexts, corruptible.
Crooks of the Und. 204: This class are generally regarded by their more astute brethren the expert thieves, as ‘half-wide’ – or, in other words, foolish thieves. | ||
No Hiding Place! 190/2: Half-wide Mug. Man only partially crooked. | ||
Tramp at Anchor 151: Nothing could be ‘hung on my door’ — blamed on me — because I was ‘half wide.’. | ||
Crust on its Uppers 20: Playing the half-wide mug on ten bob an hour. | ||
Villain’s Tale 111: ‘What are they like? Half-wide?’ ‘They’re all right, Fred. They do what they’re told.’. |
1. (Aus.) to avoid, to keep at ‘arms length’.
What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] I played them wide. I knew once I started going into their place they’d be in mine and I’d never get them out. | ‘Wellington’s On the Other Foot’ in
2. to act in a ‘clever’ manner.
Artefacts of the Dead [ebook] Don’t play wide with me, pal, I’ll give you your head in your hands to play with if you start that patter in here. |
to inform, to ‘put in the picture’.
This Gutter Life 102: Here, Johnny [...] you’re a straight boy, and I’m going to put you wide – ’cause I want you to do me a favour. | ||
Gilt Kid 23: A bloke drummed it for me and put me wide. Let her pick him up one night and she lumbered him home. And while he’s there he takes a butchers’. | ||
Dazzling Dark (1996) Act I: I put you wide, didn’t I? Showed you the ins and outs? | A Picture of Paradise in McGuinness
extremely cunning or ‘sharp’; usu. punning on a well-known local thoroughfare.
City Of The World 267: He thinks he’s as wide as Regent Street, but really he’s the sloppiest sort o’ slack-back that ever give sixpence at a country fair for a purse wi’ three half-crowns in it. | ||
Rough Stuff 164: He thought he was as wide as Broadway (as clever as they make them). | ||
(con. 1920s) Your Dinner’s Poured Out! 218: That fella is as wide as a gate. | ||
Filth 45: As wide as Leith Walk that cunt. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
(US campus) someone with large hips and buttocks.
Campus Sl. Apr. | ||
Sl. and Sociability 71: Many metaphors used in slang enhance their meaning by cultural allusions. Wide load for ‘someone with large hips and buttocks’, for example, alludes to the required signs on oversized trailers and cargo in transit on public roads and applies the image of a slow-moving, cumbersome vehicle to a person. |
of a woman, sexual excitement.
Limo 138: ‘See the redhead over there in the two-ounce dress? I gave her a little tongue-o, wham-o a while back—on the back of the neck. [...] I think she got a wide-on.’ . | ||
(con. 1966) Lords of Discipline 228: Hell, there are broads with wide-ons all over the place. | ||
Filth 338: I’ve heard that line before. Usually by a cow with a wide-on who wants it filled. | ||
Twitter 23 May 🌐 RTs, even in outrage, give Hopkins such a wide-on. |
In phrases
to avoid.
[ | Putnam County Journal 28 Jan. 3/1: Bunko men are with us. Give them a wide street [DA]]. | |
Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Dec. 44/2: ‘Take it from me, [...] if yer wants ter keep out of slough, give the slops a wide. [...] Yer can’t give ’em too wide a wide,’ he says impressively, a word with each tap. | ||
Layer Cake 82: If it was left up to me, I’d give those headbangers a wide. | ||
Viva La Madness 48: We would always give Roy a wide, wouldn’t serve him if we could. |
(US) a derog. phr. for a small town or hamlet; also attrib.
DN III:ii 164: wide place in the road, n. phr. A hamlet. ‘It’s not a town; it’s just a wide place in the road.’. | ‘Words from Northwest Arkansas’ in||
Two & Three 11 Mar. [synd. col.] Three years ago, Wichita falls was only a wide spot in the road. The depot was only a couple of loose ties in the track. | ||
in Rainbow in Morning (1965) 86: The town’s just a wide place in the road. | ||
‘Sl. among Nebraska Negroes’ in AS XII:4 Dec. 320/2: Besides more individual sobriquets there are: ‘Crack in the Track,’ ‘Stop (or ‘Spot’) in the Road,’ ‘Wide Place in the Road,’ ‘Broad Place in the Road,’ ‘Narrow Place in the Road,’ and ‘Whistle Stop.’. | ||
Headless Lady (1987) 27: Waterboro, according to the road map, is a wide spot in the road (Pop.: 5,000 to 10,000). | ||
‘Enough Rope for Two’ in Best of Manhunt (2019) [ebook] A half-hour later, they passed a wide place in the road called Separ. | ||
Texas by the Tail (1994) 169: Big Spring was a cattle town [...] Just another wide place in a dusty road. | ||
Dict. of Invective (1991) 201: one-horse town. A small and unimportant town, a wide place in the road. | ||
(con. c.1970) Phantom Blooper 218: It hasn’t changed. It’s still just a wide place in the road. It’s still just another hillbilly half-town, clean and quiet, the kind of place that falls off maps. | ||
‘Miss Kitty’ at educatedandpoor.blogspot.com 23 Apr. 🌐 I battle ignorance five days a week at four different colleges around west Georgia & east Alabama. I’m insanely busy but love what I do, and I love the little ‘wide place in the road’ town where I live. |