telly, n.¹ — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

telly n.¹

also tele

[abbr.]

1. television; also attrib.

1936		Billboard 14 Nov. 3: (heading) RCA–NBC tele progress .
1955		Galton & Simpson ‘The Television Set’ Hancock’s Half-Hour [Radio script] Oooooohhh, you’ve got a telly.
1959		B. Kops Hamlet of Stepney Green Act I: Now if they’d give me a chance on the tele I’d wake them all up.
1960		B. Kops Dream of Peter Mann Act II: Haven’t I seen you before, somewhere? On Tele maybe.
1966		T. Keyes All Night Stand 182: Toys, novelties, telly programmes and the odd extra concert.
1976		P. Theroux Family Arsenal 52: Anything on telly?
1978		A. Burgess 1985 (1980) 186: Sexually precocious, of course. A telly addict.
1985		S. Berkoff West in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 93: A kicking if they get in front of Arsenal v. Spurs on telly.
1998		Observer 27 Dec. 32: Sarah Ferguson on the telly.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We have No 183: A back up tele, in case the first does a wobbly.
2000		N. Barlay Crumple Zone 6: Wideload mother in floral pink eating biscuits in front of the tele.
2000		Guardian Rev. 26 Feb. 8: The British term ‘telly’, as opposed to the American ‘box.’.
2004		(con. 1960s-70s) T. Taylor Top Fellas 9/2: We were one-eyed Anglophiles.
2010		L. Redhead Thrill City [ebook] You’ve been all over the papers and the telly here.
2012		J. Fagan Panopticon (2013) 101: Telly off now, up to bed, Anais.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 10: When you saw them on the telly [...] they always looked a bit off.

2. (US black) a hotel [SE hotel].

1998

Big L ‘Ebonics’ 🎵 A hotel’s a telly, a cell phone’s a celly.

telespud (n.) [play on couch potato under couch n.]

an obsessive watcher of television.

1987

Newsweek on Campus Nov. 14: We telespuds respond, gathering around the electronic hearth to watch everything from M*A*S*H to ‘Mr Ed.’.

teletotty (n.) [tottie n.² (2)]

any attractive young female television presenter.

1999

Indep. on Sun. Real Life 18 July 3: She is not teletotty.