Green’s Dictionary of Slang

abortion n.

an all-purpose derog. term for a person, an object or an enterprise.

[UK]Foote Lame Lover in Works (1799) II 53: Your wounded feelings, turn’d a diff’rent way, / Will justly damn — th’ abortion of a play.
[UK]C. Lamb Notebooks 2 Nov. n.p.: Poor Lamb! Poor England where such a despicable abortion is named genius!
[UK]Marryat Peter Simple (1911) 73: D--n you, you have no excuse, so take that – and that – you yelping, half-starved abortion.
[US]C. Mathews Career of Puffer Hopkins 137: The Puncheon! How in the name of Heaven could any one patronize that miserable abortion!
[Aus]Cornwall Chron. (Launceston, Tas.) 29 Oct. 2/6: The small beer abortion can fight [...] even without the assistance of the ‘tall Irish’ bully and the ‘Life Defender’.
[Aus]Bell’s Life in Sydney 28 Mar. 3/2: If there could ever have existed any doubt as to this wretched abortion of humanity being debased to stoop to anything, such is now wholly removed.
[UK]G.A. Sala Twice Round the Clock 348: The very thought of the picture goes far towards making us forgive the painter for his asinine ‘Sir Isumbrasse,’ or whatever the abortion was called.
[Ire]Penny Dispatch 28 Nov. 4/4: The Abortion. The Times continues to show the abortiveness of the Napoleonic scheme.
[Ire]Irishman 15 Aug. 8/2: The past Session will be known as the Session of Abortions [...] We cannot but warn the people that these gentlemen, whilst laboyuring with excellent intention, as yet gained nothing.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Mar. 9/4: The dwarf now being exhibited is an abortion. It is a sickening sight.
[NZ]Observer and Freelance (Wellington) 5 Sept. 3/3: The tottering sea wall on the reclamation, the Hobson-street abortion of a wharf.
[US]E. Bellamy ‘To Whom This May Come’, in Isaac Asimov presents the Best Science Fiction of the 19th Century (1981) 225: His voice was the most pitiable abortion of a voice I had ever heard.
[UK](con. WW1) P. MacDonald Patrol 22: ‘You wretched, half-sized, measle-brained little abortion!’.
[US]S. Ornitz Haunch Paunch and Jowl 206: They’ll hire gunmen to fight their own gunmen. That’s the cheapest thing they got to sell, human abortions – what am I talking about? – monkey abortions.
[Aus]L. Glassop We Were the Rats 177: An abortion of a thing.
[UK]‘Henry Green’ Loving (1978) 193: I never guessed that bloodless abortion ’ad the guts.
[US]B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 161: Know what this house cost me [...] six thousand dollars a year for this unspeakable abortion.
[US]F. Kohner Gidget (2001) 18: What about this abortion?
[US]Baker et al. CUSS 69: Abortion An ugly person, female. A misfortune.
[US]P. Conroy Great Santini (1977) 481: This muscle-bound abortion got me to Ravenel from the West Coast?
[US]H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 17: abortion. A failure.
[Scot]I. Welsh Trainspotting 211: This fucking walking abortion says that his killers will be ruthlessly hunted down.
[US]J. Stahl Permanent Midnight 68: [of bad film scripts] Abortions could pile up for only so long.
[US](con. 1973) C. Stella Johnny Porno 103: Replace the abortion the war’s been [...] with something supposed to protect our morality.