oyster n.
1. in senses of a woman or her genitals as a fish n.1 (1) [note D’Urfey, Pills to Purge Melancholy(1719): ‘And now she has learnt the pleasing Game, / [...] / She daily ventures at the same, / And shuts and opens like an Oyster’].
(a) the vagina.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | ‘Difficile est Satyram non Scribere’ Scourge of Villanie I C1: Pert Gallus, slilie slippes along, to wage / Tilting incounters, with some spurious seede / Of marrow pies, and yawning Oystars breede. O damn’d! | |
| Honest Whore Pt 2 (1630) IV i: We [...] must deriue liquor out of stale gaping Oysters. | |
| [ | | Sea-Voyage IV iii: I could like ’em [i.e. Amazons], though they were lewdly given, If they could say no; but fie on ’em, They gape like Oysters]. |
| Barnabees Journal IV D2: Where sweet birds doe hatch their airy, / Arbours, Oysters freshly showing / With soft mossie rinde or’e growing. | |
| Parson’s Wedding (1664) III v: He that opens her stinking Oyster is worthy of the Pearl. | |
| et al. ‘Priest’s Anthem’ Wit and Drollery 214: At the farther end of all the Cloyster / He laid her down upon her bum [...] And there he opened her Oyster. | |
| ‘A Dream’ in Works (1757) I 93: I look’d and saw the blind boy’s happy Cloyster/ Arch’d on both Sides, lay gaping like an Oyster. I had a Tool before me, which I put in / Up to the Quick, and strait the Oyster shut; / It shut and clung to so fast at ev’ry Stroke. | |
| Fifteen Real Comforts of Matrimony 79: Some men love to open their Oysters themselves; others care not for that drudgery. | |
| ‘As Oyster Nan Stood by her Tub’ in Merry Songs and Ballads (1897) I 177: As Oyster Nan stood by her Tub, / To shew her vicious Inclination; / She gave her noblest Parts a Scrub, / And sigh’d for want of Copulation [...] She daily ventures at the same, / And shuts and opens like an Oyster. | |
| ‘The Martin and the Oyster’ in 18C Collections Online n.p.: Her Shell he bid her open wide, / And for his Bill make room; / Avaunt, ye Brute, the Oyster cry’d [...] The Martin [...] vainly boasted (like a Man) / Of Thicknesse and of Length. | |
| ‘Oyster Nan’ Regular Thing, and No Mistake 93: He said, ‘fair maid, your hand you’ve put, [...] Upon the oyster I should like, / With your consent, just to open. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Wkly Rake (NY) 27 Aug. n.p.: the rake wants to know What tall Sarah was doing with that cab driver in a vacant oyster celler in Bleecker street [...] if she was showing him how to open oysters or clams . | |
| Sl. and Its Analogues. | |
| Vocabula Amatoria (1966) 159: Huître, f. The female pudendum; ‘the oyster’. | |
| Snowdrops from a Curate’s Garden 23: You shall suck the oysters out of the kidney pudding if you’re good. Now—my boy! | |
| Rent Boy 61: She’s got her legs crossed [...] and I have to admit, I’m thinking the whole time about that oyster of hers. | |
| Man-Eating Typewriter 32: ‘[W]e were raped repeatedly, oyster, flange, ripped dish’. |
(b) a prostitute.
| ‘Reformation of Manners’ in Lord Poems on Affairs of State (1970) VI 408: Never was Oyster, Beggar, Cinder Whore, So much caress’d by Magistrate before. |
(c) a girl, a young woman.
| Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 23: Nell the oyster jade in breeches. | |
| Regular Thing, and No Mistake 93: [song title] ‘Oyster Nan’ . | |
| On the Waterfront (1964) 50: A couple of clams in his pocket and a good-looking oyster lined up for the night-o, that was for Terry. | |
| letter 28 Feb. in Charters II (1999) 467: Your sister I haven’t seen since she was a pale young oyster of 12. | |
| Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 55: How’s your pipe-smoking oyster? |
2. as bodily fluid.
(a) a gob of phlegm.
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Purgatorium Hibernicum n.p.: Belching an oyster in her fist / ‘I care not dis for all de grist!’ [BS]. | |
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Hawking, an effort to spit up the thick phlegm called oysters, whence it is wit upon record, to ask the person so doing, whether he has a license, a punning allusion to the act of hawkers and pedlars. | |
| , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (2nd, 3rd edn) n.p.: Oyster. A gob of thick phlegm, spit by a consumptive man. |
| Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1788]. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue [as cit. 1788]. | |
| Ulysses 317: The citizen said nothing only cleared the spit out of his gullet and, gob, he spat a Red bank oyster out of him right in the corner. | |
| Gospel According to St Luke’s 31: He spat a big oyster of spittle on Max’s trousers. | |
| The Same Old Grind 116: [She] lay amid the cigarette butts and phlegm oysters. | |
| Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 125: Those who did tended to hawk and spit oysters if passing close enough. | |
| Observer Mag. 5 Sept. 35: She hacks, gobs a lustrous jade-green ‘Beijing oyster’ on to the threadbare carpet. | |
| Empty Wigs (t/s) 228: Cheshire Oysters, the baccy phlegm saltworkers hawked onto sawdust floors. |
(b) semen.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. | |
| Queens’ Vernacular 53: semen [...] oyster (’40s: gob of semen). | |
| Homeboy 277: Magdalena swished the cum oyster from one cheek to the other. | |
| CyberAge.com 🌐 Latin twinks oral Oyster Stew. Over cultured latino hunks spew gobs on their bellies. |
3. in pl., the testicles.
| Homer Travestie (1764) II 63: But by the help of cod and oysters, / He quickly tam’d this crew of roysters. |
4. with ref. to the bivalve’s ‘closed mouth’.
(a) (also sealed oyster) a close-mouthed person; occas. as adj.
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bulletin (Sydney) 25 Aug. 22/4: But the ex-Premier remained ‘a sealed oyster.’. | |
| Lonely Plough (1931) 73: Oh, well, be an oyster, if you choose! | |
| Angel Pavement 251: I never knew anybody so close, you old oyster you! | |
| Babe is Wise 313: I dunno the details, like, Mac being an oyster w’en he wants to be. | |
| ‘Money Don’t Spend in the Stir’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 194: I closed up. Call me clam-mouth, brother, I said; call me oyster. | |
| Come in Spinner (1960) 26: ‘Why all the secrecy about it? If she’d told us we wouldn’t have minded.’ ‘Well, you know what an oyster she is.’. | |
| Four-Legged Lottery 193: You can trust me and Jack. We’re oyster. | |
| Dict. of Invective (1991) 278: oyster. A close-mouthed, uncommunicative person. |
(b) an odd or stupid person.
 | Argus-Leader (Sioux Falls, SD) 1 Nov. 22/2: ‘You c’n kid a dumb oyster like Charlie outa anything’. | |
| Caught (2001) 155: The first blitz we get I’ll drop a flue pot on the old oyster. | |
| Garden of Sand (1981) 240: If he was but one-tenth the man Jack said he was, his old man made everyone else’s old man an oyster. |
(c) the mouth.
| Homosexual Society Appendix 3, 167: Oyster, mouth. | |
| Fabulosa 296/1: oyster a mouth. | |
| Man-Eating Typewriter 58: I squawked for help with an oyster full of grit. |
5. (US) an eye.
| Bowery Life [ebook] Den dis bloke, de manager, he’d trow his oyster on de nuckle-pusher and say: ‘You’re too heavy’. | |
| Man-Eating Typewriter 18: Some of the diners vada one another with up- and dowen-turned oysters. |
6. a pearl; thus real oysters, genuine pearls.
| Oakdale Affair 17: Didn’t you lamp de oyster harness? To say nothin’ of de mitful of rocks and kale [HDAS]. | |
| Und. Speaks n.p.: Real oysters, genuine pearls. |
7. (UK Und.) a society woman who is paid to wear stolen pearls, hoping to entice an offer of purchase.
| Anatomy of Crime 194: Oyster (or Whitstable): Society woman who is paid to wear stolen pearls, hoping to get an offer from a fence. |
In compounds
the vagina.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
(US) semen.
| Bawdy N.Y. State MS. n.p.: The oyster soup ran down the crack of my ass. |
(N.Z. gay) a used condom.
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 73: Contemporary terms like street oyster (a used condom), money shot (ejaculation), Narnia (an extremely closeted client), and Whale Rider (a worker who specialises in very fat men). |
In phrases
of a woman, to have sexual intercourse.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
(US black) of a woman, to achieve orgasm.
| S.R.O. (1998) 101: ‘I could make Gloria drop her oyster in five minutes effen I put my mind to it’. |
(Aus.) silent, secretive.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 13 Jan. 24/1: Last mail from ’Ome brought news that Hunter River (N.S.W.) sculler Geo. Towns has challenged world’s champion Gaudaur for a ‘monkey’ a-side, but, as the cable has been silent concerning the matter, it may be assumed that wily old Canuck Jake is not ‘taking any’ of the Australian, and has remained dumb as an oyster on the subject. [Ibid.] 3 Mar. 14/4: Chinamen are close as oysters about the game. | |
| Kia Ora Coo-ee 15 Apr. 2/3: I had too much sense to ask ‘Blindo’ how he had managed to procure all these things. It would have been a waste of time, for my assistant could be as close as an oyster when he chose. |
(US gay) to fellate.
| Queens’ Vernacular. |
to shut up, to be quiet.
| Guardians 225: Once they got him down the station he oystered up proper. Not another word [OED]. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
unshaven.
| Sl. and Its Analogues. |
In phrases
(Polari) to make me smile.
| Fabulosa 299/1: turn my oyster up to make me smile. |