Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a sausage, a salami.

[1764		E. Moxon Eng. Housewifery (9th edn) 75: To make Pullony Sausages].
1789		G. Parker Life’s Painter 132: For supper, Joey stood, / To treat these curious cronies; / A bullock’s melt, hog’s maw, / Sheep’s heads, and stale polonies; / And then they swill’d gin-hot.
1833		‘The Coalheaver’s Feast’ Fun Alive O! 59: Forty polonies and twelve saveloys, / a sack of potatoes and twenty savoys.
c.1840		‘Fun of the Fair’ in Holloway & Black II (1979) 106: Rollas and polonies I declare, / And sausages too at Greenwich fair.
1849		Thackeray Pendennis I 33: Mr. Foker attacked the turtle and venison with as much gusto as he had shown the year before, when he used to make feasts off [...] smuggled polonies.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn).
1873		Sl. Dict. 258: Polony Cockney shortening and vulgar pronunciation of a Bologna sausage. The sausages which are sold under the name of polonies have, however, no nearer connexion with Bologna sausages than that of the word’s derivation.
1878		W.S. Gilbert H.M.S. Pinafore Act I: I’ve chickens and conies, and pretty polonies .
1884		Ally Sloper’s Half Holiday 21 June 59/2: Griggs has christened him [i.e a dog] Slinker [...] a slang term for a penny polony.
1888		S.O. Addy Sheffield Gloss. 178: Polony, a Bologna sausage.
1894		Truth (Sydney) 13 May. 4/6: We will withdraw the item [...] ‘oyster-patties and polonies’.
1898		Belfast News-Letter 11 Apr. 6/5: Coarse, highly-seasined sausages are known as ‘saveloys’ and ‘polonies’.
1909		see polony-fencer below.
1935		M. Harrison Spring in Tartarus 327: Christ! [...] isn’t there ever going to be anything but polonies; morning, noon and bloody night?
1954		Sun. Times (Perth) 28 Nov. 18/4: The best [food] we got was polony and not too much of that.
1975		E. Brady All in! All in! 128: I’m the wee Polony man / I do everything I can, / To catch the wee Polony man.
1993		Aus. Word Map 🌐 polony. a large, mild-flavoured, precooked sausage, usually sliced thinly and eaten cold. Compare beef Belgium, Belgium sausage, Byron sausage, devon, Empire sausage, fritz, German sausage, luncheon sausage, pork German, Strasburg, wheel meat, Windsor sausage.
2016		D. Whish-Wilson Old Scores [ebook] [A] crumpled brown paper bag that smelt like bad polony.

2. as double entendre, the penis.

1833		‘Conger Nell & the Clerkenwell Porkman’ in Rummy Cove’s Delight in Spedding & Watt (eds) Bawdy Songbooks (2011) III 96: And for gammoning the girls, O, he always bore the bell, / With his long polonies / Meat where bone is .
1914		Sport (Adelaide) 21 Aug. 5/4: They Say [...] That Miss Gladys H. and Miss Hilda O. were seen doing the tango by the butcher’s shop. What were you dancing for, sausages or polony? Look out for Sol Green, girls.

3. a foolish or disrespected person.

1936		F.A. Waterhouse Gun Running 47: ‘What about you, Limey? Gonna stand for them polonies docking your pay?’.
1946		(con. 1912) B. Marshall George Brown’s Schooldays 123: You are a polony, aren’t you? [Ibid.] 137: We deceive ourselves and think like polonies and sorry tripehounds.
1947		Sun. Times (Perth) 18 May 11s/1: At the end of the the first round the big polony ....oh, but forget about him.