cave n.1
1. (US Und.) a hiding place.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | ‘Chatter of Guns’ in Sat. Eve. Post 13 Apr.; list extracted in AS VI:2 (1930) 132: cave, n. [...] a place of hiding. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |
2. (N.Z./US prison) a cell.
| ‘Chatter of Guns’ in Sat. Eve. Post 13 Apr.; list extracted in AS VI:2 (1930) 132: cave, n. Cell. | |
| et al. DAUL 41/2: Cave. (Rare) A prison cell. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 39/1: cave n. a cell. |
3. (US black) one’s room, one’s home, one’s dwelling place.
| ‘Hotel Sl.’ in AS XIV:3 Oct. 239/2: cave Guest room. | |
| ‘Jiver’s Bible’ in Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive. | |
| , | | DAS. |
In compounds
(US) a subway policeman.
| Crime Fighter 13: Seven hours a day, I watched robbers and bag snatchers and pickpockets pass through the subway turnstiles on their way upstairs to where the money was [...] I was more than a cave cop. |
1. (US) one who lives in the cellar of a slum tenement.
| How the Other Half Lives 16: Not until five years after did the department succeed at last in ousting the ‘cave-dwellers’ and closing some five hundred and fifty cellars. |
2. (US) a member of the old New York aristocracy [such aristocrats still lived in the dark, old mansions their families had built earlier in the century].
| (con. 1890s) City in Sl. (1995) 118: New York’s old aristocracy [...] mostly lived [...] in deep, dark, cool, cave-like mansions of grey stone and white marble. Wags, probably also by about 1890, were calling them cave dwellers, a term used for the older nobs down to the 1930s. |
3. (N.Z. prison) one who spends nearly all his time in his cell.
| Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 39/1: cave-dweller n. = caveman [...] caveman (also captain caveman) n. an inmate who remains constantly in his cell. |