Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) (also salt junk) salt beef; cites 1883, 1896 refer to a lump of salt beef.

1762		Smollett Sir Launcelot Greaves II 9: I can as well bedaub your mistress Aurelia, whom I value no more than old junk, pork slush, or stinking stock-fish.
1799		Naval Chron. Jan.-July 120: Salt Beef was formerly called Salt Junk [...] This Piece of Beef looks similar to the Fag End of a Cable.
1808		‘Naval Officer’ Cruise 36: [footnote] Salt beef is term’d ‘junk’ by the Sailors, probably on account of cables, when old, hard and dry , being cut in junks, that is, certain lengths, for oakum.
1818		‘A. Burton’ Adventures of Johnny Newcome II 78: They dined on Junk and Cheese.
1826		C.M. Westmacott Eng. Spy II 218: A bit of tough yarn he was, too: hard as old junk without, and soft as captain’s coop meat within.
1830		W.T. Moncrieff Old Booty! 35: May the swabs live upon salt junk.
1838		D. Jerrold Men of Character I 245: You know what the fat of junk’s like.
1841		F.A. Olmsted Incidents of a Whaling Voyage 77: We did so much against our will, as the promise of ‘fresh grub,’ was exceedingly tempting, after the liberal exercise we have had upon ‘salt junk,’ for some time before.
1848		‘Percival Plug’ Biscuits & Grog 41: I mean, by famine, the necessity of eating salt junk and biscuit.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 19 Aug. 2/2: No other one should [...] supply her lip with bohea from the pot of tin, or junk and damper from the bark hut shelf.
1856		C. Abbey diary 23 Apr. in Gosnell Before the Mast (1989) 29: The usual fare is for breakfast salt ‘junk’ or beef.
1861		letter in Silber & Sievens Yankee Correspondence (1996) 57: That big bull-headed Goddard getting his muscle up on salt junk and crackers!
c.1864		W.H. Thomas Goldhunters’ Adventures 17: We [...] ate a portion of the salt junk and biscuit that the cook of the ship had insisted upon our taking with us.
1879		G.G. Hart E.C.B. Susan Jane 7: And here’s our darling Sukey too, the last but not the least, / With dunderfunk and old salt junk she’ll give us all a feast.
1880		Bulletin (Sydney) 10 Apr. 3/2: To cook salt junk — cut it into little bits with the same knife that you use in fossicking and cutting up your tobacco.
1883		J. Keane On Blue Water 37: Large junks of carcase equal to a pound and a quarter each man were served out [...] This beef was soaked all night in a tub of sea- water, and, at day- light, put into the large coppers and boiled until noon.
1886		R.L. Stevenson Kidnapped 68: The meals were either of oatmeal porridge or salt junk.
1890		H. Lawson ‘ Possum: ’ in Roderick (1967–9) I 82: He biled ’is taters soggy, an’ ’is junk was biled to rags.
1895		C. Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 69: Salt Junk, salt beef.
1896		‘Frederick Benton Williams’ (H.E. Hamblen) On Many Seas 168: Me master, when he heard the news, / Said, ‘Salt him [i.e. a dead horse] down for sailors' use’ / [...] / Between the mainmast and the pumps, / They cut me up in four-pound junks.
1898		(con. 1875) F.T. Bullen Cruise of the ‘Cachalot’ 6: A bit of salt junk and a piece of bread, i.e. biscuit, flinty as a pantile [...] made an apology for a meal.
1901		H. Lawson ‘The Men Who Made Australia’ in Roderick (1967–9) II 9: While the men who made Australia live on damper, junk and tea.
1905		Sun. Times (Perth) 8 Jan. 1/1: The inmates of a riverside girls boarding school have a perpetual hunger [and] the maidens are losing their plumpness and erubescence on the salt junk-burgoo regimen.
1909		D. Stewart Dead Man’s Gold in Illus. Police News 6 Mar. 12/3: ‘I wouldn’t give a bit of salt junk for a woman that hadn’t got a spirit’.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 585: I’m tired of all them rocks in the sea, he said, and boats and ships. Salt junk all the time.
1936		(con. 1830s–60s) ‘Miles Franklin’ All That Swagger 79: They camped in frost or rain and lived on damper and salt junk.

(b) poor or indigestible food or drink.

1850		Manchester Spy (NH) 5 Oct. n.p.: One or two in the ranks [...] were rather weak in the knees, probably from the effects of being shot in the neck by a junk bottle.
1899		W.J. Kountz Billy Baxter’s Letters 24: The first remedy which should suggest itself is a purgative which will act on the liver, and cleanse the system of all the indigestible junk with which it has been overtaxed.
1901		Dly Jrnl (Salem, OR) 13 Aug. 2/2: He said of these junk eaters [...] that the booze and muck-a-muck faded before them like dog-biscuit in a band of starving malamuts.
1968		J. Hersey Algiers Motel Incident 121: He went down to the corner shop and bought a lot of potato chips and junk like that.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 117: I hope that’s Nova Scotia lox [...] not that Alaskan junk.

(a) (orig. US) a usu. negative description of possessions or other unspecified objects; used dismissively of objects that are in fact sound but that the speaker no longer likes; also attrib.

1842		Congressional Globe 23 Feb. 261: Champagne was charged for under the head of ‘old junk’ [DA].
1851		Yale Tomahawk Feb. n.p. : The all receiving shop of some dealer in old junk.
1862		‘Artemus Ward’ Artemus Ward, His Book 105: State how much pork, impendin crysis, Dutch cheeze, popler suvrinty, [...] pickled tomaters, old junk, perfoomery, coal ile, liberty, hoop skirt, &c., you hav on hand?
1882		G.A. Sala America Revisited 76: The marine store or ‘junk’ dealer, as he is styled in New-York.
1908		‘O. Henry’ ‘Conscience in Art’ in Gentle Grafter (1915) 131: What good is the art junk to us?
1916		J. Lait ‘Charlie the Wolf’ in Beef, Iron and Wine (1917) 70: He would o’ sure landed in some big league if it hadn’t o’ been that he was caught comin’ out o’ the wrong flat with a lot o’ junk.
1920		H.C. Witwer Kid Scanlon 235: Tony gathers up his junk and [...] beats it.
1935		R.L. Bellem ‘Beyond Justice’ in Spicy Detective Stories Nov. 🌐 The huge silver loving cup [...] was a massive piece of junk.
1947		(con. 1944) J.H. Burns Gallery (1948) 85: He lumped all his junk in the center of the floor.
1950		A. Buckeridge Jennings Goes To School 168: How on earth do you expect to draw straight lines and accurate angles with this junk?
1960		C. Cooper Jr Syndicate (1998) 93: Hurry up and put that junk away.
1978		P. Theroux Picture Palace 255: It’s junk [...] and it’s private, so stop scavenging.
1982		G.V. Higgins Patriot Game (1985) 118: He kicked the tire. ‘Junk,’ he said.
1997		C. Hiaasen Lucky You 6: All they found was junk.
2000		T. Udo Vatican Bloodbath 115: All the riders wore leather hoods, though these weren’t any cheap junk that you bought from some Soho leather queen shop.
2020		(con. 1991-94) W. Boyle City of Margins 26: [of an automobile] ‘Piece of junk just quit on me’.

(b) (Aus.) the dregs of a bottle or glass of alcohol.

1984

Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 632/1: C.20.

(c) (US Und.) jewellery.

1900		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 19 May 11/3: She was a beaut! All done up in one of those new-fashioned spangled gowns, with huge rocks In her ears, enough junk on her fingers to open a pawnbrokers sale, and her front lit up like a walking advertisement for Tiffany.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 82: Gee, she’s got 8,000 pounds of junk [...] I saw ’em opening a jewel case.
1911		G. Bronson-Howard Enemy to Society 77: Of course we can’t get rid of the junk for six months.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 146: If you get your hands on the ‘junk’ walk out quietly.
1938		D. Runyon ‘Cemetery Bait’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 518: She has plenty of junk on her in the way of diamonds.
1945		R.L. Bellem ‘Ruby Ransom’ Hollywood Detective Dec. 🌐 You recover the loot and let him lam. That fixes it so he doesn’t have to fence the junk.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 136: junk [...] plated jewelry [...] imitation or cheap jewelry.
1952		C. Hamilton Men of the Und. 323: Junk, [...] 2. Jewelry or imitation jewelry.

(d) a run-down vehicle.

1922		F.S. Fitzgerald ‘The Diamond as Big as the Ritz’ in Bodley Head Scott Fitzgerald V (1963) 45: It’s just an old junk we use for a station wagon.
1962		P. Crump Burn, Killer, Burn! 160: One hundred hell. I can out run that junk.
1972		Chopper Mag. Dec. 18/2: Cheap Jap junk.
1972		(con. 1960s) D. Goines Whoreson 195: How about letting me use one of those old junks till my car is delivered?

(e) something unpleasant.

1935

W. Coburn Law Rides the Range 187: For the love of Jupiter, wash that smelly junk off your hair.

(f) (US, also junkst) cheap or inferior liquor.

1997–2001		Online Sl. Dict. 🌐 junkst n 1. cheap alcohol. (‘Let’s go get some junkst.’).
2000		P. Beatty Tuff 15: And now you drinking a Thirstbuster [...] That junk will make you sterile.

(a) (also jeesunk) opiates, orig. opium, later usu. heroin.

1914		Detroit Free Press (MI) 26 Apr. 82/2: The craving for ’coke’ grew so strong that i would do anything [...] even to picking up junk and selling it.
1918		H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 28/2: JUNK. Drugs.
1926		Helena (MT) Indep. 30 Dec. 2/5: Bundles and packages of morphine, cocaine, opium, yenshee and hashish [...] were burned in the kitchen range of the county bastille. The ‘junk’ [...] would have meant pipe-dreams for many addicts.
1929		E. Booth Stealing Through Life 267: You get those funny ideas of reforming. But a few drinks, a shot of junk, or a few hours with the bunch — aw, you know how it is.
1937		‘Boxcar Bertha’ Sister of the Road (1975) 102: I knew she was full of junk, which she had received in her mail. All her woes and days of torture were over.
1949		N. Algren Man with the Golden Arm 59: Nothing can take the place of junk — just junk.
1959		W. Burroughs Naked Lunch (1968) 7: I have used junk in many forms: morphine, heroin, dilaudid, eokodal, pantopon, diocodid, diosane, opium, demerol, dolophine, palfium.
1959		J. Blake letter 26 May in Joint (1972) 136: Aspires to the jeesunk and chippys with it.
1961		T. Taylor Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 96: “Now we’re on the junk. [...] Man, don’t ever associate the white stuff with me.
1964		Larner & Tefferteller Addict in the Street (1966) 32: Right there and then you got good junk, good heroin.
1977		S. Stallone Paradise Alley (1978) 75: This tomato dipped into some bad Chinatown junk an’ dropped dead.
1988		Ice-T ‘I’m Your Pusher’ 🎵 You’re just a toy punk to mess with that junk.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 139: Probably all the lactose in the cut: you were shooting ten times more sugar than junk.
2001		K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 21: There’ll always be some cunt bringing junk into the city.
2010		K. Richards Life 285: Mick chose flattery, which is very like junk - a departure from reality.
2013		T. Robinson Hard Bounce [ebook] Fudge your reports and your junk is free.
2021		J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 209: ‘Sorry I popped your ass for junk outside the Club Alabam’.

(b) non-recreational drugs in general, often medicinal.

1918		G. Bowerman diary 8 July in Carnes Compensations of War (1983) 112: I [...] am now waiting for Hub to ransack the medicine chest to see what new kind of medicine he can discover. I imagine I will be OK in a day or so if I take his junk & go to bed.
1933		‘Paul Cain’ Fast One (1936) 240: Kells bought ome aspirin, swallowed two tablets. Borg said [...] ‘That junk don’t do you no good’.
1956		‘Ed Lacy’ Men from the Boys (1967) 44: I sat on the bed and wondered if this might be it. Take a box of the junk [i.e. sleeping pills] and slip out of this world.
1956		‘Raymond Thorp’ Viper 136: She brought me pocketsful of junk - benzedrine, dexedrine, even some muck called opium pills.
1969		R.R. Lingeman Drugs from A to Z (1970) 134: junk [...] (1) heroin. (2) any drugs. (3) inferior, diluted heroin.
1976		N. Thornburg Cutter and Bone (2001) 20: Then why the downers, Mo? Why the booze? How come you can’t get through a day without all that junk?
1986		L. Heinemann Paco’s Story (1987) 36: Three-quarters stoned on some newfangled junk.
2000		F.X. Toole Rope Burns 6: My memory half shot from the morphine and the other junk they pumped into me.

(c) cannabis; also attrib.

1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 30: Junk is bigger than ever.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 99: ‘You been smokin’ herb.’ [...] ‘You know damn well I don’t mess with none of that junk.’.
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 24: The scourge of grasshoppers and junk fiends everywhere.

(d) amphetamine, benzedrine.

1964

H. Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 43: So Georgette, flying in her world of junk, called the Greeks.

(e) an injectable medicine.

1963

in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 30: Here I am mainlining this ammo junk – ammonophiline [i.e. an asthma treatment].