Green’s Dictionary of Slang

gravel n.

[consistency]

1. (US) granulated sugar.

[US]Times Dispatch (Richmond, VA) 17 Oct. 7/7: Gravel — Sugar.
implied in gravel-train
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

2. (drugs) crack cocaine [play on rock n. (5d)].

[US]ONDCP Street Terms 11: Gravel — Crack Cocaine.
[US] (ref. to 1981) J. Lethem Fortress of Solitude 251: It’s 1981: nobody’s heard the term crack [...] What’s slipped lately onto the street [...] is called variously base-rock, gravel, baking-soda-base and roxanne.

3. (S.Afr.) marijuana.

[SA]R. Malan My Traitor’s Heart (1991) 71: You had to charf (say), ‘Level with the gravel, ek sê’.

SE in slang uses

In compounds

gravel-agitator (n.) [his marching and drilling]

1. (US) an infantryman.

[US]L.G. Tisdale Three Years behind the Guns 277: The ‘gravel agitators’ (soldiers) nursed the thought [...] that we were unable to do anything until they came to show us how.
[US]D. Runyon Tents of Trouble 86: Gravel agitators on a long, hard hike.
[US]F.R. Witt Riding to War with ‘A’ 159: Gravel-agitators, fall in.
[US]Phila. Eve. Ledger 20 July n.p.: ‘Gravel agitator’ and ‘red leg’ – artillerymen.
[US]Popular Science Jan. 268: Get a ‘flatfoot’ (a soldier's term for a sailor), a ‘gravel agitator’ (infantryman), and a ‘gyrene’ (marine, to you) all together and they'll sound off about everything!
[US]Nat. Guardsman 3 2/2: Translated into the forthright language of the gravel agitator, these reasons mean simply that it now will be possible to work out procedures, signals, codes, and — most important — ‘know how’.
[US](ref. to WWII) Chilton’s Commercial Car Jrnl 133 95/1: He served with the U.S. infantry during World War II. He says he was what was then commonly referred to as a ‘gravel agitator’.
[US]A.E. Cornebise Stars & Stripes 103: He insisted that the term doughboy, ‘as applied to a gravel agitator,’ had not originated in the Philippines, as some alleged, but earlier, in the Indian campaigns following the Civil Wa.
[US]T. Harris Clearance and Fair and Just Reward 49: I joined the Navy to keep from being a gravel-agitator.

2. see agitate v.

gravel-carrier (n.)

a submissive, hen-pecked male; thus gravel-pit, the place such men supposedly live.

[UK]Mercurius Fumigosus 65 15-22 Aug. 3: Our fleet of land Friggats are so lusty in this Roade, that they Hen-peck all their men, making them Gravel-carriers, insomuch that Night and morning they crow over them whilst the poor hen-pecken wretches lie sprawling in the Hole.
[UK]Mercurius Fumigosus 68 5-12 Sept. : That they may Peck their Husbands into Witt, / And make them travell to the Gravell Pitt.
gravel-crusher (n.)

1. (also gravel-cruncher, mud-crusher) an infantryman, occas. a US marine (see cite 1911); thus gravel-crushing n., marching.

[UK]J. Horrocks letter in My Dear Parents 29 May 84: The mud-crushers (or infantry) must be quite envious to see [...] me and other mounted gentlemen gallop past.
[US] in Jrnl of US Cavalry Assocation Nov. 1888 10: ‘We’ve got a feller that can fight all around you mud crushers,’ was the reply of a Michigan trooper.
[UK]Barrère & Leland Dict. of Sl., Jargon and Cant.
[UK]Sketch 24 525/1: When we got into cantonments [...] I walked down after him, and, as I got outside the hut, he saw me coming along and called out, ‘Hallo, Gravel-crusher!’.
[US]El Paso Herald (TX) 30 Aug. 4/2: The union station was charged and taken [...] by a squad of ‘gravel crunchers’ known technically in the US service as marines of the navy.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 19 Dec. 13/4: I have had seven years in the Force, and have done a little ‘gravel-crushing’ in the various States in that time, and I know which uniform I prefer for field work.
[US]Rising Sun 4 Jan. 1/2: I s’pose yer think yer the only ryebuck dinkum gravelcrusher in this muddy country, think yerself blinkin’ funny, doncher?
L.N. Smith Lingo of No Man’s Land 41: GRAVEL CRUSHER An infantryman, always walking, so named, it is explained, from his big feet.
[UK]N&Q 12 Ser. IX 383: Mud-Crusher. A soldier.
[UK](con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 109: Gravel crusher: An old Cavalry nickname for an infantryman.
[US]E.S. McCartney ‘Sl. and Idioms of World War’ Papers Michigan Academy of Arts & Sciences 10 n.p.: mud-crunchers, infantrymen.
[US](con. 1910s) L. Nason A Corporal Once 277: You mean I got to hike all day on foot like a god-damned mud-crusher.
D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 20 Sept. 15: The Cat with the Heavy Bark starts ’em crunching gravel in the early bright.
[US]P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: Infantry [...] gravel crushers.
[US]P. Conroy Great Santini (1977) 465: You’re not bad for a gravel cruncher, Captain.
[UK](con. WWII) S. Hynes Flights of Passage 209: Our Marine infantrymen were a different species, called Gravel-crunchers or Crunchies.

2. (Anglo-Irish) a tramp.

[UK]R.W. Campbell Private Spud Tamsan in DSUE (1984).

3. (Anglo-Irish) a heavy boot, typically worn by a farmer or agricultural worker.

[UK]Partridge DSUE (1984) 496/2: C.20.
gravel-grinder (n.)

1. a drunkard, esp. one who has a drunken fall and scratches their face.

[UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.

2. (US) an infantryman.

[UK]Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
[US]E. Colby Army Talk 147: Close to the plain gravel grinder where heavier guns never go, / You will find us, the one-pounder section, taking our part in the show.
(con. WWII) K. Cook Other Capri 46: I’d like to see that paddlefooted gravelgrinder fly an airplane [HDAS].
gravel path (n.) [the SE gravel path is raked, the hair is combed; both for neatness]

(Aus.) the human hair.

[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 2 July 14/4: Correctness of deportment in the hair is a strong point with Yankee manhood. It is the worst of form to turn up, even at a lynching, with your pate’s gravel-path in disorder.
gravel rash (n.) (also gravelly rash)

abrasions caused by a fall on a gravelly or uneven surface, esp. in the context of drunkenness; cit. 1885 seems to imply a wound that looks similar.

[UK]‘Ducange Anglicus’ Vulgar Tongue 16: The gravel rash Said to any one who has a scratched face; generally applied to drunkards.
[UK]London Standard 13 Dec. 3/3: When he has lapped the Gutter, and Got the Gravel Rash [...] not till then is he entitled, in vulgar society, to the title of Lushington, or recommended to Put in the Pin.
[UK]Manchester Eve. News 3 Nov. 4/2: They got cut up heavily [...] Tabby won, though he’d got the gravel-rash (cut face) from the bricks.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 18 July 22/2: He is dreaming of love, gore, scalps, and general ghastliness; and presently we will creep from our couch, and with the assistance of a stiff-hair brush, cover the tenderest part of his person with gravelly-rash.
[US]Standard (London) 21 Oct. 3/1: I admitted him and then saw he had the gravel-rash .
[Aus]Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 33: Gravel Rash, a scratched face from a drunken fall.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 13 Dec. 18/2: Later C.M. shouts half-a-dozen times, but after a brief spasm of violence, in which he gets a bad attack of gravel-rash, subsides into slumber.
[US]Sun (NY) 5 Mar. 4/6: He has got the gravel rash [...] he has lapped the gutter.
[Aus]C.J. Dennis ‘The Battle of the Wazzir’ in Moods of Ginger Mick [unpub. unrevised proof version] An’ they might ’ave left ’is Kingship nursin’ gravel-rash in bed.
D.L. Sayers Suspicious Characters 302: I had gravel-rash all over my face. The brute had rolled me on the rough ground, blast him!
[US] ‘A List of Briticisms’ in AS XVII:1 Feb. 6/1: gravel-rash. Abrasions caused by contact with gravel or any rough surface.
[Aus]T. O’Farrell Behind Enemy Lines 7: His ride down the steepest hill around our patch [...] culminating in numerous minor wounds and a bloody gravel rash.
gravel-teazers (n.)

a pair of boots or shoes.

[UK]‘A Flat Enlightened’ Life in the West II 127: The ‘gravel teazers’ were made [...] The boot-maker was ushered into the drawing-room, with the bag of boots and shoes.
gravel-train (n.)

1. (US Und.) a go-between of lobbyists who buy up legislators.

[US]‘The Lang. of Crooks’ in Wash. Post 20 June 4/2: [paraphrasing J. Sullivan] The go-between of lobbyists is a gravel train.
[US]J. Sullivan ‘Criminal Sl.’ in Amer. Law Rev. LII (1918) 890: The go-between of lobbyists who buys up legislators is called the ‘gravel train’ because he has the ‘rocks’ whereby he can debauch legislators.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 106: gravel train The go-between of lobbyists who buys up legislators.

2. (US) a sugar bowl [sense 1 above].

[US]H.W. Bentley ‘Linguistic Concoctions of the Soda Jerker’ in AS XI:1 43: GRAVEL TRAIN. Sugar bowl.
gravel-walloper (n.)

(US) an infantryman.

[US]D. Runyon ‘The Defence of Strikerville’ in From First To Last (1954) 11: I had an idea then that you came from the state gravel wallopers.

In phrases

get gravel for one’s goose (v.)

(US) to have sexual intercourse.

[US]Randolph & Wilson Down in the Holler 110: ‘To git some gravels for my goose,’ meaning that he is in search of sexual satisfaction.
scratch (the) gravel (v.) [the image of wheels spinning furrows in the gravel; note scratch v.] (Aus./US)

1. (also chuck up the gravel, throw gravel) to leave hurriedly, to move very fast.

[US]Albany Microscope (NY) 2 June n.p.: E. Whipple [...] ‘scratch’d gravel’ for Michigan.
[US]H. Smith Life and Adventures 63: The crowd laughed, and the rake was compelled to scratch gravel.
[US]White Cloud Kansas (KS) 6 Oct. 2/5: It was Mr Larzelere’s watermelon patch from which a woman made him ‘scratch gravel’.
[US]M.J. Holmes Tempest & Sunshine 103: You'd better scratch gravel for home, and if I catch you here again dickerin’ after Fanny, I'll pull every corn-colored har out of your head!
[US]E.L. Wheeler Deadwood Dick in Beadle’s Half Dime Library I:1 80/1: Come along [...] we’ll have to scratch gravel.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Dec. 19/3: Gawsake, Matilda, chuck up the gravel a bit! If I ain’t to be pitied between the two o’ yer!
[US]W.M. Raine Wyoming (1908) 69: Y’u better roll your trail, seh; and if y’u take my advice, you’ll throw gravel lively.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 13 Aug. 40/2: She was spry, and she was active, / And assisted in the chase / When they had to ‘scratch the gravel’ for their grub; / But, however fleet the quarry, / Or however hot the pace, / Why, she always kept one eye upon the club.
[Aus]‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘The Uplift’ in Poems of the Bush (1987) 56: If your nag’s too poor to travel / Then get down and scratch the gravel. / For you’ll get there if you walk it.
[Aus]‘Banjo’ Paterson ‘Victor Second’ in Three Elephant Power 115: The populace immediately went for him with stones, bottles, and other missiles, and he had to scratch gravel to save his life.
[US]O. Strange Sudden 12: Yu busted that fella wide open, an’ his bronc’ll be throwin’ gravel plenty-industrious just now.
‘The Pig and the Inebriate’ 🎵 I began to scratch the gravel, / on all my fours did travel.
[US]C.L. Edson ‘Ravin’s of a Piute Poet Poe’ in Scholastic Mag. n.p.: You shall travel! On the level! Scratch the gravel now, and travel.
[US]‘Hy Lit’ Hy Lit’s Unbelievable Dict. of Hip Words 51: scratch gravel – Split quickly.

2. (also scratch for gravel) to work hard; thus gravel-scratcher n., a working man.

[US]Wool Grower (Buffalo, NY) Nov. 117/2: Thousands, like him, 'scratch gravel’ for naught, all their days.
[US]Genesee Farmer (US) 25 79: Everybody who has ever farmed in the West knows that well-bound, dry wheat can be stacked so as to stand any weather [...] even by a New Hampshire gravel-scratcher, who saves every kernel.
Caldwell trib. (ID) 5 Nov. 5/1: No wonder the farmer has to scratch gravel to pay his taxes.
[US]E.N. Westcott David Harum 226: Till I was consid’able older ’n you be I had to scratch grav’l like all possessed.
[Aus]Truth (Brisbane) 25 July 3/4: ‘I didn’t come ail this way to scratch gravel [i.e. to march] and dodge lead’.
[Aus]E.G. Murphy ‘Snores’ Dryblower’s Verses 93: Now he scratched for gravel / Serving drinks to midnight drunks.
[Aus]‘William Hatfield’ Ginger Murdoch 100: I always thought you wase a decent sorta coot, Kelly [...] a plain ord’n’ary gravel-scratcher like meself.
[US]W.M. Raine Cool Customer 135: They claim he’s spread out darned thin and if anything cracked he would have to scratch gravel considerable.