Green’s Dictionary of Slang

to masturbate.

2003

Number One Adult Sexual Health Terms Advisor 🌐 Masturbation Slang Male Terms: [...] buff the banana/wood.

(US) to get an erection; thus in fig. use, to become extremely excited.

1998

(con. 1986) G. Pelecanos Sweet Forever 50: Jumbo Linney’s beat-to-shit, primered ’82 Supra, the two-tone model that made Spics catch wood.

to achieve an erection.

1997		Roger’s Profanisaurus in Viz 87 Dec. n.p.: get wood v. To achieve an erection. As in: ‘Sorry love, I’m having trouble getting wood.’ Also get string.
2000		Indep. Rev. 25 Feb. 4: How exactly did men – to use the delicate form of words used in the porn industry – get wood?
2005		L. Theroux Call of the Weird (2006) 48: Can you get wood? [...] Can you get a hard-on the entire time? [Ibid.] 59: It’s my job to have good wood to do a scene.
2010		(con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 91: I never get wood in here [i.e. strip club] [...] they’re skanks, most of the women they hire here.
2011		S. Kelman Pigeon English 260: Hey, look now, Harr’s got wood!
2020		G. Krauze What They Was 261: Someone hangs himself [...] Someone on the spur shouts did he piss and shit himself and someone else shouts did he get woods.
2024		C. Stella Joey Piss Pot 221: ‘They may get wood watching mob movies [etc]’.

to render erect.

1997

Mad mag. Feb. 45: Whoa! This cold cement is, like, giving me wood.

(US) an erection of the penis first thing in the morning.

1997–2000		Da Bomb 🌐 31: Wood (woody): An erect penis. Every guy knows about morning wood.
2004		P. Howard PS, I Scored the Bridesmaids 11: There you have it. Fifty cures for the old morning wood.
2012		M. McBride Frank Sinatra in a Blender [ebook] I looked down at the morning wood stabbing through a hole in my boxers.
2024		M.M. Olohan Trans 141: When you take Testosterone and your libido returns, you wake up with morning wood .

see pull one’s wire under wire n.¹

1. (US) of a man, to have sexual intercourse.

1970

T. Southern Blue Movie (1974) 13: Shrieking at the top of her voice, ‘Put the wood to me, B!’ [Ibid.] 246: ‘Put the wood to her, Sid!’ she screeched.

2. see also general phrs. below.

to display an erection (cf. sport a woodie under woodie n.² ).

2000

personal correspondence 7 July: sporting your wood (US) displaying a male erection. Heard in a pub from some foreign backpacker. As a colonial, of course I have no idea of the origin of this phrase. And I’m sure that you feel exactly the same. But beware, there may be that subtle antipodean wit on display in this paragraph.

to subject oneself to (anal) intercourse.

2013		K. Koke ‘Are You Alone Fam’ 🎵 [of a man] You turned bitch you probably should take wood.
2018		KO ‘9er Ting’ 🎵 And when gyal take wood from the back she can feel this splinter.

(N.Z. prison) an injury inflicted by a truncheon.

1982

G. Newbold Big Huey 255: wood rash (n) Injury inflicted by a truncheon.

see have the deadwood on under deadwood n.

(US) to beat severely.

1973

A. Moore in Heller In This Corner (1974) 311: I beat him until I almost killed him [...] I was laying the wood to him and I racked him up.

to mount the pulpit, to preach.

1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: To look over the wood; to ascend the pulpit, to preach: I shall look over the wood at St. James’s on Sunday next.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1788].

1. to punish, to coerce by threats.

1986

Chapman NDAS.

2. to cause serious trouble for.

1975

E. Torres Carlito’s Way 133: Then he put the wood to me.

3. see also sex phrs. above.

a carpenter.

1902		S.E. White Blazed Trail 95: The blacksmith is also a good wood-butcher (carpenter).
1927		in ‘Jargon of the Und.’ in DN V.
1930		‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 217: Wood butcher – A carpenter. A hobo who can do odd repair jobs.
1944		P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: wood butcher . . . carpenter.
1968		G. Slatter Pagan Game (1969) 110: The woodwork instructor always referring to academic wallahs as though he were very much on the back foot for being a wood butcher.

1. (Aus.) a fool.

1986

R. Beckett Dinkum Aussie Dict. 57: Wood duck: Technically the Australian wood duck is classified as a maned goose. Thus anyone who is called a wood duck is a goose. An idiot.

2. (Aus. prison) an inexperienced prisoner.

1990

Tupper & Wortley Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Wood duck. A naive prisoner.

1. to ostracize a fellow worker; thus woodheaping n.

1932		Bulletin (Sydney) 9 Nov. 21/2: A shearer up Armidale way had been ‘woodheaped’ for refusing to take out his A.W.U. ticket. ‘Woodheaping’ is about as old as shearing in Australia. In pre-union days it was applied to the man who made himself a general nuisance [...] It consists in expelling the offender from the shearers’ mess, with the result that he has to have his meals in solitude, sitting on the woodheap, which lies behind every shed cookhouse.
1957		D. Whitington Treasure upon Earth 90: Mick inquired about the attitude of station owners on the roads leading south. ‘No handouts [...] They’ll woodheap you on Yarranook and Wineba, but the rest’ll turn the dogs on you.’ [AND].

2. to force an itinerant to chop firewood in return for food and accommodation.

1977

D. Whitington Strive to be Fair 114: ‘He’d woodheap yer’ [...] refers to a station boss too lousy to give you a feed for nothing. He puts you on the woodheap first [AND].

(US) a derog. term for a rustic, a peasant.

1989

H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 193: These include: [...] shitkicker, sodbuster, swamp angel, timber rat, woodchuck, and wood-hick (or -tick).

a street seller of matches.

1868		‘Six Years in the Prisons of England’ in Temple Bar Mag. Nov. 537: When he can’t go on that ‘racket,’ he’ll turn ‘mumper’ and wood merchant (which means a seller of lucifer matches).
1984		Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 1348/2: [...] ca. 1875–1912.

(Can./US) a skunk, a polecat.

1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1993–2003		crap magnet Urban Dict. 🌐 wood pussy a skunk.

(US) to punish severely.

1996

T. Wolff ‘The Chain’ in The Night in Question 142: ‘I can’t let this guy fuck me over and just walk away. Next thing, everybody in town’ll be lining up to give me the wood’ .

(N.Z. prison) to defeat, to outdo.

1953

I. Hamilton Till Human Voices Wake Us 37: Passive resistance always has the wood on compulsion.

(US) to be obsessed with, usu. negatively.

2005		R. Cea No Lights, No Sirens 8: We knew Patty had wood for Lester Knowles, not because Patty was a racist, but because [...] he pretty much hated anyone who wasn’t Italian.
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] ‘You guys have wood for every real cop’.

(US) to defeat comprehensively.

1991		D. Jenkins You Gotta Play Hurt 318: TCU giving thirteen and a half was a mortal lock because T.J. was gonna lay wood on A & M’s maroon ass.
1998		D. Jenkins Rude Behavior 250: T.J. could chase him down and lay wood on his ass till the whistle blew.
2012		D. Spivey ‘If You Were Only White’ 10: In the length and ferocity of the ‘whup’in,’ Mother Lula [...] laid wood with righteous indignation.

to stand in the pillory.

1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: To look through the wood; to stand in the pillory.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1788].

(Aus.) second-rate.

1902		Bulletin (Sydney) 30 Aug. 14/1: An Afghan came in with six 70lb. bags of chaff on his camel. A teamster drawing water put down a pound a bag for it. He had 12 horses, poor as wood; he might get two feeds for his team out of it.
1910		M. Fee Woman’s Impressions of the Philippines 233: My landlady, who was an heiress in her own right, told me that the old financier came to Capiz ‘poor as wood.’.
1937		B. Field Cock’s Funeral 197: Everybody was poor as wood except Mrs. Perry. Mrs. Perry, the widow of a famous judge, owned an estate across the road from the mailbox.

to shut the door; usu. as imper.

1921		(con. WWI) E. Lynch Somme Mud 131: ‘Shut the door!’ [...] ‘Put the bit of wood in the hole!’.
1925		(con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 309: Wood In The Hole, Put A Piece Of: Shut the door.
1981		P. Wright Cockney Dialect and Sl. 92: The well-known Put de wood in de ’ole ‘Close the door.’.
2014		T. Black Artefacts of the Dead [ebook] She had the wood in the frame and the mortise turned in the lock by the time he could blink.

to stand in the stocks; latterly to serve a prison sentence.

1838		Cornwall Chronicle 1 Sept. 3/2: James Smith was fined 5s. for being drunk, and not paying, he was ordered to take it out in wood [i.e. to be put in the stocks] .
1840		Sydney Monitor & Commercial Advertiser (NSW) 15 Dec. 2/4: The Bench [...] ordered her to pay a fine of five shillings, or to have an hour in the stocks. The prisoner said, that rather than pay the money she would ‘take it out in timber’.
1848		Hobart Guardian (Tas.) 22 Mar. 5/4: The worthy Magistrate [...] intimated [...] that when they had not the cash to to pay for lushing, he was determinnd iliey should take it out in Wood, we mean the Stocks.
1853		Bell’s Life in Sydney 22 Jan. 3/2: P.M.— ‘You must pay 5s. or go to prison for 48 hours.’ Polly— ‘Well I suppose I must take it out in wood, as I havnt got no money’.
1893		(con. 1839-44) J. Demarr Adventures in Australia Fifty Years Ago 40: Thank yer honor, but I will not give these folks here the five shillings, I shall keep it, and drink yer honor’s health with it, and go and take it out in wood.

standing in the pillory.

1811		Lex. Balatronicum.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.

a general labourer; also in non-manual use (see cite 1912).

1887		‘Aus. Colloquialisms’ in All Year Round 30 July 67/2: A ‘wood-and-water joey’ is a hanger about hotels and a doer of odd jobs.
1888		‘Rolf Boldrewood’ Robbery Under Arms (1922) 155: Bobby, he don’t know a p’leeceman from a wood-an’-water joey.
1890		Bulletin (Sydney) 16 Aug. 15/2: A little lower down the river is a young native who issues half-measures of food, but makes it up with a bushel of sneers and incivility. I was working with him less than two years ago when he was wood-and-water ‘joey,’ and that only as a favour to himself and family.
1892		Ohinemuri Gaz. (Waikato) 27 Aug. 2/2: You can see Rube Ruggs any day at the Shearer’s Rest [...] where he occupies the honorable post of wood-’n-water Joey.
1900–10		Stephens & O’Brien Materials for a Dict. of Aus. Sl. [unpub. ms.] 168: A wood and water joey is a servant similar to an English ostler or hotel man-servant.
1912		Sun. Times (Perth) 1 Dec. 4/5: The union secretary, although he has been the party’s wood-and-water joey for many a year, is not persona grata.
1917		‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘Three Elephant Power’ in Three Elephant Power 2: He was wood and water joey at some squatter’s place.
1928		V. Palmer Passage 42: I wanted you to be something different from a wood-and-water joey.
1936		(con. 1830s–60s) ‘Miles Franklin’ All That Swagger 100: Complementary to his responsibilities as wood-and-water joey and general rouseabout, all the pioneer women who pulled their weight on the frontier, had to cope with toil which in Great Britain was relegated to ‘general slaveys.’.
1945		Baker Aus. Lang. 62: A handyman on a station, otherwise called a [...] wood and water joey (sometimes abbreviated to the simple joey).
1965		B. Wannan Fair Go, Spinner 103: He was a wood-and-water joey / At the ‘Jackeroo’s Retreat.’.

(US) to drink.

1840		N.O. Picayune 31 Oct. 2/3: He ‘wooded up’ as he came along [DA].
c.1855		J.F. Kelly Humors of Falconbridge 175: [He] made a straight bend for Sander’s ‘Grocery,’ and began to ‘wood up’ [DA].
1894		Star-Gaz. (Elmira, NY) 15 May 4/3: Yale College Slang [...] [of a college dormitory] You needn’t wood up for them.