Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) red, from drunkenness.

1969

J. Hibberd Dimboola (2000) 88: I’ll smash your boiled-bum face in.

(US) an Irishman.

1909		‘The Lang. of Crooks’ in Wash. Post 20 June 4/1: [paraphrasing J. Sullivan] The Irish race [has] numerous cognomens, as a boiled dinner, harp or a mick, also a terrier.
1910		Spokane Press (WA) 22 Sept. 7/3: An Irishman is referred to as a ‘boiled dinner’.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

(Aus./N.Z.) snobbery, stand-offishness, ‘side’; also attrib.

1892		Otago Witness (NZ) 11 Feb. 20: he was not smart enough for the lurements of the Arrow dredging boom, and became ‘interested’ in some ‘boiled dog’ venture.
1908		Marlborough Express (NZ) 4 Apr. 5: These deluded people think that ‘boiled dog’ is essential to breeding.
1910		Truth (Wellington) 21 May 4: If they can’t afford servants [...] they should put on less ‘boiled dog’.
1924		Truth (Wellington) 26 Jan. 6: And so he did stalk in awful majesty last Saturday evening. It was a triumph of boiled dog.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 119: Terms like frill, boiled dog, jam and guiver, connoting ‘side’ or affectation.
1965		T.B. Haber ‘Canine Terms Applied to Human Beings’ in AS XL:2 93: boiled dog. Extreme social pretentiousness.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 28: boiled dog Affectation, eg, ‘Don’t come the boiled dog with me, mate. I know you grew up in a railway house in Papakura.’ From about 1910.

a soldier.

1856		Bell’s Life in Sydney 8 Nov. 3/4: The undertaking by the ‘boiled lobster’ to take his daughter.
1866		Wild Boys of London I 124/1: ‘One of the biled’ll come and shove him out.’ ‘One of the biled?’ exclaimed Lucy. ‘Yes. A sojer,’ returned Sam.
1878		Besant & Rice Celia’s Arbour (1887) 284: Jack the Sailor, Joe the Marine, and the Boiled Lobster.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

(Aus./US) a starched dress shirt.

1862		‘Artemus Ward’ Artemus Ward, His Book 30: The Shakers axed me to go to their meetin, as they was to hav sarvices that mornin, so I put on a clean biled rag and went.
1868		Dundee Courier 28 Oct. 3/2: On his first candidature for office in Oregon territory, certain of the baser sort voted agin’ him [...] in respect of his wearing a white shirt, or, as they [...] styled it, a ‘boiled rag’.
1875		Public Ledger (Memphis, TN) 23 Apr. 1/2: About ten o’clock Sunday morning [...] an infuriated man in every household [...] would be yelping for a clean boiled rag .
1883		Dly Bulletin (Honolulu) 28 Aug. 2/3: The shirt (‘a boiled rag’) was being got up [...] when she and her husband were going somewhere.
1882		Sydney Sl. Dict. (2 edn) 4: Flesh-bag - A shirt. American, biled rag.
1890		Fort Worth Wkly Gaz. (TX) 26 June 7/4: Nothing has more style about it than what the horrid men call a ‘boiled rag’.
1900		N.Y. Tribune 6 May 4/4: [from the London Leader] If you do not hapen to possess a clean ‘bi’led rag’ [...] then an overcoat buttoned up to the neck round which you fold a handerkerchief is quite in the fashion.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 23: BOILED RAG [...] see boiled shirt.
1912		Wash. Standard (WA) 4 Oct. 1/5: Federal officals in court dress were an unknown quantity, a ‘boiled rag’ [...] was seldom seen.
1913		A. Irvine My Lady of the Chimney Corner 170: As a flunkey I had my first dose of boiled linen and I liked it.

1. a starched dress shirt.

1851		C.L. Canfield Diary of a Forty-Niner (1906) 104: He had shaved his beard [...] and was dressed up in a ‘biled shirt’.
1862		‘Artemus Ward’ Artemus Ward, His Book 224: Accordingly I put on a clean Biled Shirt and started for Washinton.
1869		A.K. McClure Three Thousand Miles through the Rocky Mountains 412: In order to attend the Governor’s reception, I borrowed a boiled shirt, and plunged in with a Byron collar, and polished boots.
1873		J. O’Connor Wanderings of a Vagabond 229: Men wearing polished boots and boiled shirts were too exclusive to play in company with the ‘great unwashed’.
1883		Daily Trib. (Bismarck, ND) 5 Sept. 11/6: Going to slide into a boiled shirt, grease my boots, and light out for Washington.
1888		N.Y. World 13 May n.p.: Is it possible that the Chicagoans never heard of white shirts before this spring? May-be the street-railway presidents never saw a starched shirt (I must deplore the use of the word ‘biled’ as applied to shirts) until this year [F&H].
1893		New Ulm Rev. (MN) 22 Nov. 4/5: He [...] found it to be a white shirt with a highly glossed front. ‘A boiled shirt!’ he exclaimed.
1898		in Overland Monthly (CA) July 58: A good clean shirt an’ a good clean shave — / An’ a white biled shirt.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 23: BOILED SHIRT: a white cotton or linen shirt: no doubt originated in the common wear of flannel, crimean or other woolen shirts which will not stand washing. Sundays and holidays a change to a boiled shirt was fashionable.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 29: Castleton wore a red shirt [...] and wouldnt’ have worn a biled shirt if he’d had one.
1910		Sun. Times (Perth) 1 May 2nd sect. 10/5: One wonders In gazing at the mournful spectacle whether it is the skates that pain him, or his boiled shirt.
1913		‘Lord Ballyrot in Slangland’ in Tacoma Times (WA) 10 July 4/4: Every guy what gets into the blow-out has to doll up in a hard-boiled chest-protector.
1914		‘Bartimeus’ ‘Legion on the Wall’ in Naval Occasions 54: ‘Oh, my aunt!’ gasped an ex-International [...] ‘My last boiled shirt and it’s got to last another week!’.
1922–24		O.O. McIntyre White Light Nights 19: Doc Shuffield in high hat and boiled shirt.
1933		T.T. Flynn ‘The Deadly Orchid’ in Goodstone Pulps (1970) 106/1: I went in with a fat billfold, a boiled shirt, tails and everything.
1946		J. Evans Halo in Blood (1988) 163: I’m sure you didn’t ask me to put on a boiled shirt and come over just to point out what a dirty name I am.
1954		Picture Post 13 Nov. 14: Mr. Hindle the manager, his boiled shirt swollen with satisfaction.
1986		S. King It (1987) 357: In his threadbare tux and yellowing boiled shirt he looked like an undertaker who had fallen on hard times.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1922

Joyce Ulysses 224: There was a big spread out at Glencree reformatory, Lenehan said eagerly. The annual dinner you know. Boiled shirt affair.

3. (US) a respectably dressed man.

1977

P. Hamill Flesh and Blood (1978) 51: All them boiled shirts comin’ aroun’ here for the fights – that’s the Parole Board, man.

prostitutes, viewed collectively.

1610

Shakespeare Cymbeline I vi: Which rotteness can lend nature! such boil’d stuff As well might poison poison!

(Aus. gambling) of a racehorse, not being raced to win.

1861

Herald (Melbourne) 3 Jan. 6/7: Hence [...] such phrases as ‘a dead un,’ ‘as good as boiled,’ and other sentences expressive of the advantage of betting against a horse that can by no possibility win: for ‘dead’ is a metaphorical mode of expressing the condition of an animal sure not to run, or, if running, ‘made safe not to win.’ .

(Aus.) a phr. representing the two extremes – lose or win – of a given bet.

2013

T. Peacock More You Bet 8: When ‘going for broke’ [...] the outcome was either going to be ‘boiled lollies or Turkish delight’; or, ‘the Paris house (which was a glamrous Sydney restaurant) or the shit house’, [or] ‘either the shithouse or the penthouse’.

see separate entry.