Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (Aus./Can./N.Z./US black) the human head; thus do one’s melon, go off one’s melon, to lose one’s temper, to become over-excited.

1868		C. White The Hop of Fashion in Darkey Drama 4 Act I: Now, look here, old Moco. I’ll squeeze your melon.
1930		L. Lower Here’s Luck 150: ‘. I thought you had gone a bit wonky in the melon.
1933		‘Goat’ Laven Rough Stuff 92: So after inferring that he’d use the sap on my melon (head) he gave it up as a bad job.
1954		J.E. Macdonnell Jim Brady 50: The old codger’s gone off his melon.
1966		D. Niland Pairs and Loners 115: Looks like he’s cracked his melon on that rock there.
1971–2		C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 217: ‘Watch your melon!’ v. – ‘Watch what you’re doing!’.
1978		R. Caron Go-Boy! 28: He looks just like my Uncle Bruno did when my pa hit him over the melon with the soapstone.
1985		R.G. Barrett You Wouldn’t Be Dead for Quids (1989) 172: This box-head’s got a melon on him like retaining wall.
1998		Redman ‘I Don’t Kare’ 🎵 Who shot JR? I did, right in the melon.
1998		R.G. Barrett Mud Crab Boogie (2013) [ebook] ‘Remember when she told us if we said anything, she’d come back with a phaser and vaporise us. [...] ‘Yeah. She was off her melon alright’.
1998		Eble Campus Sl. Nov.
2006		C. Hiaasen Nature Girl 30: Gonged his melon pretty bad, but he finally came out of the coma.
2011		Royce Da 5’9 ‘Legendary’ 🎵 The MAC-11 ‘ll crack your melon.
2015		J. Stahl OG Dad 237: I have seen Baby N take some bonks on the melon that would dent a Hummer.
2015		N. Cummins Tales of the Honey Badger [ebook] I dusted off the melon protector [i.e. cycling helmet].
2021		T. Pluck Boy from County Hell 33: [A] Tigers cap with the strap extended with duct tape for his oversized melon.

2. (US) a windfall or unexpected profit [financial jargon cut a melon, to announce an extra dividend].

1911		Chicago Daily News 16 Sept. 18/2: They are at any rate no worse than the similar inventions regarding ‘deals,’ and ‘melons’ and ‘extra dividends’ and ‘inside buying’ which were distributed through Wall Street in 1906 and 1909 [DA].
1913		D. Runyon ‘In Old Juarez’ 1 Jan. [synd. col.] Let’s talk of the melon we cut when Rock / Brought Lake Shore home through the mud.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks n.p.: Hatch a melon, planning a robbery.
1938		H.M. Anderson Strip Tease 45: The Minsky boys are reputed to have cut up a melon of 25 G’s a year, beside their regular salary.
1943		R.L. Bellem ‘Feature Snatch!’ Dan Turner - Hollywood Detective Feb. 🌐 I got a ten-grand melon I can cut with you. Fifty-fifty.
1948		Aurora Beacon News (IL) 7 Nov. 39/2: This year, a record number of your friends and neighbors will split a record ‘melon’ in our 1948 savings clubs [DA].
1953		E. Reid Shame of N.Y. 12: He divided it up into fourteen districts [...] , and the ‘take’ was over $3,000,000 a year, by Devery’s own admission. However, Tammany cut itself further in on this melon when the graft was exposed.
1962		S. Longstreet Flesh Peddlers (1964) 222: The Coast is where the big melon is.

3. (Aus./Can./N.Z./US black) a fool.

1914		Sport (Adelaide) 31 Jan. 9/4: They Say [...] Don’t be such a bally melon, Rita .
1925		S. Lewis Arrowsmith 393: This Inchcape – to try to master them with strychnine! A noble melon!
1938		Press (Canterbury) 2 Apr. 18: He might [...] be told that he was a ‘a melon’ to have come out.
1968		S. Gore Holy Smoke 27: Strewth – how big a melon can a man be? I oughta get me head read!
1986		T. Winton That Eye, The Sky 120: You can tell the melons. We all look scared to death.

4. (Aus.) of a woman, celibate and/or single.

1914

Sport (Adelaide) 20 Mar. 5/4: What have you done with Hilda. Has she taken on the Ranger, or is she a melon until Dick [...] comes back?

5. (also cantaloupes, honeydews, lopes) in pl., the female breasts, esp. when large.

1937		R.L. Bellem ‘Labyrinth of Monsters’ in Goodstone Pulps (1970) 152/1: [He] could see the girl’s heaving, panting breasts, twin ripe half-melons of cream-white flesh].
1942		in G. Legman Limerick (1953) 39: There was a young girl of Llewellyn / Whose breasts were as big as a melon.
c.1950		Nunnery versus Fuckery 42: ‘I can’t reach those precious melons [...] but I want to see them aroused’.
1952		(con. 1920s) ‘Harry Grey’ Hoods (1953) 229: Your appeal [is] centred around your [...] sweet, small, round honeydews.
1959		‘Don Elliott’ Gang Girl (2011) 21: His long, tapering hands slid around the heavy, ripe melons that were her breasts.
1964		J. Charyn Once upon a Droshky 220: Her cantaloupes kiss the midget’s head.
1975		L. Rosten Dear ‘Herm’ 104: He took 1 gander at those bouncing cantalopes.
1977		Butler & Shryack Gauntlet 84: Them pretty little melons all pink and tight.
1985		Eble Campus Sl. Apr. 5: hooters – women’s breasts. Syn.: cantaloupes.
[1986		R.G. Barrett Godson 106: [She] eased her breasts out. They were firm and round like two big juicy rockmelons].
1989		K. Dunn Geek Love 300: A boy! Yes! By the bouncing melons of Mary! I’m a grandpa!
1992		D. Jarman letter 2 Apr. Smiling in Slow Motion (2000) 110: Lady Helen ‘Melons’ Windsor was expected.
2001		‘Randy Everhard’ Tattoo of a Naked Lady 11: Bunny squeezed her ’lopes together, serving them up for my hungry eyes: ‘These tits alone cost five bucks to look at.’ [...] She neared the bed and leaned over me to let those massive, all-American melons swing inches above my face. ‘Wanna taste them?’ she goes.
2002		R.G. Barrett Mystery Bay Blues 78: Beneath the two gorgeous big melons was a neat six-pack.
c.2003		P. Voltaire Blue Undercover Episode 8–12 at McStories.com 🌐 Instead of cantaloupes, she now had volleyballs on her chest. Her new size did made her a true shirt-stretcher like her three friends, and the rest of the station started to take notice.
2006		G. Malkani Londonstani (2007) 57: Check out da size a her melons.
2012		G. Pelecanos (con. 1972) What It Was 205: She had big melons held up in a cream-colored bra.
2017		T. Pluck Bad Boy Boogie [ebook] He offered to help her carry her melons to the car.

6. fellatio [play on head n. (2c)].

1977

N.C. Heard When Shadows Fall 10: ‘Ah laid this dynamite melon to the dude [...] And do you know that the nigga dimed me out to my ole man?’.