Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. to give up, to acquiesce, to surrender [the way in which a dog rolls over on its back to indicate surrender].

1951		C. Stoker Thicker ’n Thieves 256: [He] deemed it best for his own interests to travel down the other street and to become an anti-Stoker man. [...] Inspector Parker, like Rover, had rolled clear over.
1986		R. Campbell In La-La Land We Trust (1999) 43: ‘You roll over easy.’ ‘I never contradict a cop.’.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 167: War hero, huh? Those Japs must’ve rolled over for you.
1997		T. Fontana ‘God's Chillin’ Oz ser. 1 ep. 3 [TV script] My attorney was a raging dickbrain: he just fucking rolled over in court.
1998		K. Sampson Awaydays 17: Maybe we just expected them to roll over.
2000		S. Maloney Big Ask 98: I’m not going to roll over, help poor benighted Bob with his dynastic succession problems.
2001		K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 133: The courier’s going to roll over for us.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 174: roll over 1. Give up [...] 2. Give up somebody else, in sense of implicating your mates or colleagues, not unknown among those the police take into custody and perhaps do a deal with.
2006		D. Winslow Winter of Frankie Machine (2007) 46: I’m not rolling over for this guy.
2006		B. Matthews Intractable [ebook] [S]omewhere along the line he had rolled over and thought he would get an easier run by siding with the screws.
2010		K. Richards Life 269: My attitude probably didn’t help, but what am I going to do, roll over for them? [i.e. the police].
2013		T.F. Dunham ‘Soul Collection’ in ThugLit July-Aug. [ebook] We may have been small-time [...] but we wouldn’t roll over for anyone.
2021		J. McWhorter Woke Racism 178: A great many of our immigrants from Russia and China are mystified at how readily so many smart Americans are rolling over in the face of rhetoric these immigrants recognize as what they escaped.

2. (US black) to attack, to intimidate.

1970		G. Scott-Heron Vulture (1996) 16: It was no longer the thing to run the block with your main men and roll over anybody who didn’t dig what you were in to.
2023		Rayman & Blau Riker’s 83: They’re not just going to take it from me or roll over me.

3. (also roll) to betray, to inform against, as in the phr. roll over on.

1973		J. Wambaugh Onion Field 117: ‘I damn near beat a dude to death one time who rolled over on me,’ Jimmy lied. ‘I found out he snitched me off’.
1985		N. Pileggi Wiseguy (2001) 190: Werner had to roll over on the men he hired to do the robbery.
1990		J. Wambaugh Golden Orange (1991) 51: He starts rollin over on everybody.
2000		T. Udo Vatican Bloodbath 7: That cocksucker sold you out, man. He went and like rolled over for the fucking Romans, dude!
2000		Lehr & O’Neill Black Mass 252: Bulger was just about ungettable, that he was smart and shifty and never talked freely on the phone or dealt directly with anyone who would roll .
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 155/1: roll over v. to betray, to inform (upon), particularly in a police interrogation situation.
2002		S. Maloney Something Fishy (2006) 47: When fingerprint fragments were found [...] the driver rolled over.
2003		see sense 1.
2007		N. ‘Razor’ Smith Raiders 260: His own father rolled over and turned supergrass [...] He dobbed in all his confederates.
2018		‘Aidan Truhen’ Price You Pay 63: Some others [i.e. employees] will have rolled over on me and made some shit up because they don’t have anything to give up.

4. (US) to acquiesce in promiscuous sexual intercourse.

1980

G. Liddy Will 343: [O]ne man, whose wife was faithful now but had been promiscuous before wedlock became convinced that said wife was still rolling over for almost everyone and it drove him crazy.

5. (Aus.) to defraud.

1992

R.G. Barrett White Shoes 2: [He] had probably rolled over more Jewish landlords and estae agents than Rommel’s Panzer Divison.

6. (US und.) vtr. to make someone into an informer.

1996

E. Bunker Dog Eat Dog 56: The guy was on bail on one of those RICO laws and they were scared the feds would roll him over into a Valachi.

7. to rob, to break into.

2023

A. Parks To Die in June 232: ‘[M]y husband and some employees rolled her flat over, as you well know’.