Green’s Dictionary of Slang

K n.

[abbr.; since 1980s K has replaced the equivalent G n. (1) in popularity]

1. a kilometre.

[UK]Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 635/1: K or k [...] A kilometre orig. (late 1940s) Services.
[Aus]T. Winton Lockie Leonard: Scumbuster (1995) 71: I did a fan belt about thirty k’s out of town.
[Aus]L. Davies Candy 25: We follow this track along the creek for [...] about fourteen Ks.
[Aus]P. Temple Dead Point (2008) [ebook] Two complaints about extra Ks appearin on the clock.
[NZ]A. Duff Jake’s Long Shadow 157: Its long-standing rivalry with the foresty village up the road thirty ks.
[Aus] D. Whish-Wilson ‘In Savage Freedom’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] They do the armed robs — three of them. [...] Not a few K’s from where they live.
[UK]A. Wheatle Crongton Knights 160: We [...] were stranded nuff Ks from home.
[Aus]C. Hammer Scrublands [ebook] ‘My place goes for ten k, after that it’s Crown land’.

2. (also kay) 1000, esp. as $1000 or £1000 [SE kilogram, 1000 grams].

[US]A. Lurie Nowhere City 40: ‘Is it expensive?’ ‘In the neighborhood of nine or ten K.’.
[US]G.V. Higgins Friends of Eddie Coyle 56: Four bastards [...] got ninety-seven K out of some little bank in the woods.
[UK]A. Payne ‘Senior Citizen Caine’ in Minder [TV script] 13: Three and a half k’s.
[US]J. Ellroy Because the Night 73: ‘For a K note and two grams of righteous blow you can call me anything short of Sambo’.
[Scot]I. Welsh Trainspotting 229: Strutting around the fucking city [...] pretendin their on fifty K a year.
[US]G.V. Higgins At End of Day (2001) 28: All a sudden want twelve million dollars for a couple days’ use of their fuckin’ beach house — ’at’s worth at the very outside eighteen K.
[Ire]P. Howard Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nightdress 24: We’re talking four measly K’s.
[UK]J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 362: Mega-bets — hunded kay on a four-horse accumulator.
[US] M. McBride Frank Sinatra in a Blender [ebook] I grabbed the trashbag with three hundred K.

3. in drug uses.

(a) (also kay) a kilogram of any illicit drug.

[NZ]A. Duff One Night Out Stealing 30: A massive celebration party with half a k of dope.
[UK]J.J. Connolly Layer Cake 1: It’s [i.e. some cocaine] about forty kay or twelve years’ worth, depending how you look at it.
[Aus]P. Temple Dead Point (2008) [ebook] The Feds helped the boys bring in more than the two Ks they find on them.

(b) ketamine hydrochloride, a mildly hallucinogenic drug, developed as a battlefield anaesthetic, associated chemically with phencyclidine (PCP) and often used as a legal substitute for MDMA; thus K-head, an habitual user of that drug.

[US]G.P. Pelecanos Firing Offense 210: The K-heads and cocaine kids moved about these rooms like hopped-up insects.
[US]New York Mag. 8 Dec. 49/4: Somebody gave me a bump of coke, but it turned out to be K.
[UK]Guardian Guide 27 Jan.–3 Feb. 28: The original apocryphal K story was the girl who fell asleep in a waltzer, hired by the club from a fun fair.
[NZ]D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 97/1: K n. ketamine.
[UK]Indep. Rev. 7 Mar. 4: Ecstasy is out, in favour of a horse tranquilliser that makes you feel, to quote one K-head I spoke to, ‘just like you’re dead.’.

(c) phencyclidine [? mis-reading of sense 3b].

[US](con. 1986) G. Pelecanos Sweet Forever 11: He’d lost too many amigos to that stuff, K-heads who had dropped their bikes doing eighty, or taken on the wrong guys in bars.
[US]G. Pelecanos Right As Rain 50: Ray had been paid to kill some K-head who’d ripped off the stash of a dealer.

4. (US campus) money [from sense 2].

[US]Da Bomb 🌐 17: K: Money.

5. (US black) a gun.

Chief Keef ‘Cappin’ 🎵 Gambino grab my meatroll / Aye Tadoe grab my K doe.

In compounds

K-hole (n.)

(drugs) a period of confusion that follows the use of ketamine.

[UK]Guardian Guide 12–18 June 30: Hoovering viagra and poppers or falling down k-holes.
[US]ONDCP Street Terms 13: K-hole — Periods of ketamine-induced confusion; the depressant high associated with ketamine.
[NZ]D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 99/2: K hole n. the disassociative state one falls into after overdosing on ketamine.
[US]J. Stahl Pain Killers 321: I walked in to find her in a total K-hole.
[Ire]L. McInerney Blood Miracles : ‘Are you still down a fucking k-hole, Cusack?’.
[US]T. Swerdlow Straight Dope [ebook] Dude I went so deep into a k-hole I thought I’d never climb out.