Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) the scrotum.

2013

T. Robinson Hard Bounce [ebook] Simultaneously, a tiny heel collided with my hairy beanbag.

a lesbian.

1997		Roger’s Profanisaurus in Viz 87 Dec. n.p.: bean flicker n. Lesbian.
2001		OnLine Dict. of Playground Sl. 🌐 bean flicker n. lesbian f. reference to masturbation of a female by stimulation of clitoris.

(drugs) a seller of any type of drugs in pill form.

1972

(con. 1960s) D. Goines Whoreson 225: I saw the bean man walking down the street.

(Aus.) one who is good at amassing money.

1903

Bulletin (Sydney) 2 July 15/2: As a bean-raker Dowie could give Booth points.

(US und.) San Quentin prison, California.

1882

‘The Jargon of Thieves’ in Derry Jrnl 8 Sept. 6/5: If [...] a safe robber had been sent to San Quentin [the thief] would say ‘A gopher-cracker has gone over to the bean ranch’ .

(US prison) a slot in a cell door through food is passed.

2022

J. Hannaham Didn’t Nobody Give a Shit 17: Carlotta pushed her paws through the bean slot and let the COs cuff her.

of a woman, to masturbate.

2001

K. Sampson Outlaws (ms.) 129: The scenes with her flicking her bean are fucking good, by the way.

(US) to go crazy, to lose emotional control.

1964		‘Weldon Hill‘ Casualties 164: Have you flipped your beanie, Clay? Six watermelons!
1966		J. Neugeboren Big Man 92: Next thing I know he’s flipped his bean, dancing around me [...] throwing jabs .

(orig. US) in no way whatsoever.

c.2003

‘Dating Advice’ Column at DatingFun.com 🌐 I can’t tell if someone likes me or not for beans.

a half-sovereign, a half-dollar.

1812		Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.
1823		Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.
1864, 1867, 1870		Hotten Sl. Dict.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 34: Half a Bean, half a sovereign.
1901		Argus (Melbourne) 20 Sept. 6/4: The half sovereign masquerades as half a bean or half a couter.
1905		Exeter & Plymouth Gaz. 4 Feb. 5/6: Ten shillings is known in some circles as a ‘half-bean’ and a ‘smelt’.
1908		N.-Y. American 26 Apr. in Fleming Unforgettable Season (1981) 54: Four bits (a slang expression signifying half a bean).
1919		Smith’s Wkly (Sydney) 7 June 9/6: Slang of Money [...] 10/- is a ‘half bean,’ a ‘smelt’.
1939		P. Di Donato Christ in Concrete 206: ‘All right, cockos,’ commanded Fausta, ‘throw up half a bean each.’.

(US) eccentric, crazy.

1910		Spokane Press (WA) 17 Aug. 4/3: He’s so loose in his attic that he rattles.
1913		C. Mackenzie Sinister Street I 164: We are a couple of barmy chaps, hush not a word! / A little bit loose in our tiles, perhaps, hush, not a word! / We’re lunatics, lunatics, everybody declares / We’re a couple of fellows gone wrong in our bellows, / As mad as a pair of March hares.
1919		New Scimitar (Memphis, TN) 31 July 10/2: Golfing [...] Those who followed it for a pastime were comical in the conc — which is English for loose in the attic.
1928		M. Meredith ‘The Human Head in Sl.’ in AS III:5 409: Other expressions which one sometimes hears or sees in popular speech [...] ‘loose in the bean’.
1968		T. Wolfe Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (1969) 194: Acid rappers, freaks who made a competition out of who could take the most acid — they all seemed to end up loose in the head.
1970		E. Thompson Garden of Sand (1981) 35: But suggesting something like that with a straight face, he had to be loose in the canoodle.
1978		W. Diehl Sharky’s Machine 272: I’m not saying he’s a goddamn loony bird. He’s just, uh . . . a little loose in the attic.
1993		T. Szasz Lexicon of Lunacy 57: Loony-tick Loony-tunes Loopy Loose in the bean Loose in the hilts [etc.].

1. to lose one’s temper.

1932		(con. 1910s) J.T. Farrell Young Lonigan in Studs Lonigan (1936) 63: He finally lost his bean, and dribbled head on into her.
1979		J. Morrow Confessions of Proinsias O’Toole 96: He’d lost his bap completely [...] he stood shaking a trembling fist under my nostril.

2. (US) to become obsessed with.

1955

H. de Leeuw Underworld Story 120: Dasher Abbandado, a Murder, Inc. hood, lost his bean to a tall, lissome, auburn-haired, devastating cutie, named Connie Malone.

nothing at all, esp. of money.

1901		Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Dec. Red Page/3: If a man is assaulted by highwaymen and robbed he is ‘stuck up,’ and if he has no money whatever it is common to say he ‘has not a bean.’.
1903		A. Binstead Pitcher in Paradise 217: The exquisite Smith [...] replied, somewhat dejectedly, ‘Not a bean.’.
1909		W.N. Famous Colonel Crook Stories 94: So the bill began to climb like a hod-carrier, and I’m there with not a bean.
1920		‘Sax Rohmer’ Golden Scorpion 231: An’ not a ‘oat’ in me pocket— not a ‘bean’! Broke to the wide.
1932		I. Rathbone We that Were Young 130: And now I’ve gone and hitched myself to someone who hasn’t got a bean—not a bean in the world—apart from his pay!
1953		K. Tennant Joyful Condemned 7: ‘Got any money?’ ‘Not a bean.’.
1967		‘Whisper All Aussie Dict.’ in Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxiii 4/4: cracker: [...] Also ‘to not have a cracker’. No money. Also not a bean.
1971		N. Smith Gumshoe (1998) 175: ‘So you’ve no money on you, then?’ ‘Not a bean,’ I said.
1999		K. Sampson Powder 42: I intend to repay nothing for a year. Not a bean.
2005		Salvesen & Cousineau Artists’ Estates: Reputations in Trust 180: We were left with the studio building, my parents’ house in the Catskills, the paintings, and not a bean to do anything with!

insane, eccentric.

1906		Lit. Digest 33 738/2: Dan O'Leary said Izzy would go off his bean.
1915		R. Beach Heart of the Sunset 268: He’s queer — he’s off his bean.
1924		F. Greene ZR Wins 160: But he’s just a little bit off his bean, the poor thing.
1933		J.T. Farrell Gas-House McGinty 349: I’ll bet as sure as Christ made green apples that he’ll go off his bean.
1955		E. Hoagland Cat Man 241: Chief was scornful. ‘He’s off his bean’.
1997–2001		K. Wilford ‘Maggie’ at Vanagon.com 🌐 ‘This guy is really off his bean,’ I thought. ‘He really thinks this box on wheels is a person.’.

to think, to act intelligently, to work things out.

1916		C.T. Clark diary 24 June in Soldier Letters (1919) 26: The wounded, waiting to be taken away, were in a horrible state of fright, and couldn’t use their beans at all.
2000		J.E. Lighter Word Improvisation in Atlantic Monthly Mar. 🌐 Interest in the contents of politicians’ noggins (long ago the word referred to a kind of drinking mug) is hardly new; the electorate has always liked candidates who use the old bean without being too obvious about it.

(US) a ‘lowrider’ automobile, as customized and driven by Mexican/Puerto Rican teenagers and gang members.

1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 16: I ditched the bean-mobile at the Ford lot.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 58: Joe thought [...] he’d been electrocuted by his highvoltage beanmobile.

(US) a Mexican.

1971

P. Barnes Pawns 63: He is called ‘shithead,’ ‘turd,’ ‘maggot,’ [...] or ‘beanbag’ (an epithet for chicano) depending on the DI’s vocabulary and the recruit’s physical or racial characteristics.

(US) a Mexican.

1960		J. Brosnan Long Season (1975) 230: ‘Come on, Orlando, you bean bandit,’ I yelled at the TV screen. [Ibid.] 269: Bean Bandit A Latin American ballplayer.
1969		Current Sl. IV:3-4 (1970).
1981		E. Bunker Little Boy Blue (1995) 145: Where you’re going there’s lots of toughies – Okies, niggers and bean bandits.

(US) a Spanish-American.

1980

E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 55: Most of the pejoratives characterized Chicanos in terms of the foods associated with them [...] bean choker.

(US) a derog. term for a Mexican.

1990

S. Morgan Homeboy 252: Then whichever bean dip it was told that calamity [...] to doubletime it back to the pen.

(US, also bean and chili eater) a derog. term for a Mexican; occas. other Latin Americans (see cite 1922).

1918		DN V 63: Bean-eater, a name given to the low class Mexican.
1922		F.P. Armitage Diet & Race 22: The Badawin who live on flesh, milk, and dates, deride the ‘bean eater’: Chilian miners.
1931		M. Sandoz ‘Sandhill Sundays’ in Botkin Folk-Say 293: There’d be a shapping match if he had to cuss out every cow-hand or bean-eater there.
1936		R.F. Adams Cowboy Lingo 198: To the cowboy a Mexican was a ‘greaser,’ ‘oiler,’ [...] ‘chili-eater,’ or ‘bean-eater’.
1944		R.F. Adams Western Words (1968) 14/2: bean eater A cowboy’s name for a Mexican.
1954		Indep. Record (Helena, MT) 9 Oct. 3/7: Other westerners might be [...] bean and chili eaters (Mexicans).
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1978		Maledicta II:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 151: Bean-eater, Beaner, Beano Any Chicano, Mexican, Latin American, or other brown-skinned person for whom beans are a dietary staple. Still a fighting insult, but less so since the movie ‘Freebie & The Bean,’ with a Chicano narcotics agent as co-hero.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 228: bean, bean eater, beaner, and beano, all for a Latin American, usually a chicano.
1993		W. Blevins Dict. of the Amer. West 16/1: bean-eater A jocular but derogatory term for a Mexican.
2018		(con. 1963) L. Berney November Road 240: ‘That goggle-eyed bean-eater’.

1. a non-Hispanic person who prefers Hispanic partners for sex.

1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 29: bean queen [...] 2. anglo who sticks to Mexican boys.
1988		H. Max Gay (S)language.

2. a Hispanic drag queen n. (1)

1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 29: bean queen [...] Mexican homosexual.
1998		R. Scott Rebecca’s Dict. of Queer Sl. 🌐 bean queen – an Hispanic drag queen. Used by some gay men, generally derogatorily.

1. (US) that part of a town in which the poor or the immigrants live; such immigrants are stereotypically, but not invariably, Hispanics.

1996

J. Green Words Apart 154: Beantown returns to a Mexican inference in a parallel meaning: the poorest, immigrant section of a town or city.

2. see also Bean Town

see separate entries.

(US) a fool; thus beanbrained adj., foolish.

1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 48: You’ll see how beanbrained she is.
1967		‘Whisper All Aussie Dict.’ in Kings Cross Whisper (Sydney) xxxii 6/1: bean brain: Stupid oaf.
1976		R. Woodley Bears 90: Come on, bean-brain [HDAS].
1983		R. Aven-Bray Ridgey-Didge Oz Jack Lang 21: Bean Brain Fool.
1998		Traywick Gallery (Berkeley CA) catalogue at www.paulsonpress.com 🌐 And in Black Rabbit, the black shape of a crouching bunny rests above off-color insults printed pretty in pink: Slimeball, Lumpkhead [sic], Stinker, Beanbrain.
2002		CyberSoccerNews 🌐 You cannot go to Asia, broadcast the world’s greatest and most important sporting event to an audience of untold millions, and sound like a subliterate beanbrain.

(US campus) to stare at breasts.

1997–2001

Online Sl. Dict. 🌐 bean count v 1. to stare at breasts, usually in cold weather. (‘We just sat on the porch bean counting.’).

(orig. US) anyone who deals with financial matters, esp. an accountant or statistician; thus bean-counting n. and adj.

1975		Interfaces Feb. 74: [title] The measure of M.S./O.R. applications; or, Let’s hear it for the bean counters [OED].
1986		Indep. 29 Nov. 17/1: The highly respected beancounters at Price Waterhouse have failed to recognise that times are changing in the City.
1992		R. Marcinko Rogue Warrior (1993) 380: A no-load, bean-counting pain-in-the-ass.
1999		Bug (Aus.) 28 July 🌐 Cut across to those genius bean-counters at Norths who have got a $20 million piece of Central Coast real estate.
2002		Sydney Morning Herald 11 July 40: Who they [i.e UK cricketers] are individually, and what their talents might be collectively, seem to be factors of complete irrelevance to the boofheads and bean counters who run the game.
2015		http://grey-magazine.com July 🌐 Sometimes I just feel like a bureaucrat—a yellowing, servile bean-counter.
2021		Betoota-isms 62: Bean Counter [...] 1. A tax accountant 2. A white collar professional who records, tallies and analyses financial numbers 3. A corporate drone devoid of personality, often in training for a triathlon or long-distance fun run.
2022		A. Kirzman Giuliani 182: ‘I wasn’t a politician,’ Kerik said. ‘I wasn’t one of these fucking bean counters’.
2023		M. Herron Secret Hours 299: ‘You know who the Park usually sends on these bean-counting missions?’.

1. (US) an inhabitant of Boston, Massachusetts; thus bean-eating adj., Bostonian in manner.

1842		C. Mathews Career of Puffer Hopkins 19: A select circle of acquaintance, among wharfingers, small boatmen and bean-eaters, near the market.
1867		G.E. Clark Seven Years of a Sailor’s Life 252: Take that, you bean-eater.
1870		Eve. Teleg. (Philadelphia, PA) 26 Mar. 5/1: The Bostonian did not object to being called a bean-eater.
1889		L.A. Dly Herald 21 Aug. 1/5: The fight to a finish between [...] Daniel Kelliher of Boston, and Joe Ellingsworth of New York [...] Ellingsworth received another in the stomach and the bean-eater barely parried a blow at his face. The New Yorker got a slashing blow on the side of the head, and the bean-eater paid for it with a light blow on the lip.
1896		letter in Marble Hill Press (MO) 16 Jan. 1/2: [signed] An Old-Time Bean-Eater.
1900		Golden Caribbean 86: Then there are the clerks, book-keepers, and managers of the commissary [...] young fellows from the Southern part of the United States mostly, now and then a bean-eater from Boston.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 22/2: Bean-eater (New York). A term of scorn for a citizen of Boston, referring to the former Sunday custom observed by some Bostonians of accepting for dinner on that day cold belly of pork and colder beans.
1910		Century Illus. Mthly Mag. 80 109/2: Why, you fool Yankee bean-eater, there ain’t neither of us knows a bloomin’ bit about the engines of this ship.
1921		Munsey’s Mag. 73 292/2: Luke had a Boston stock-plunger coming to his clairvoyant shop in search of advance information about a certain stock. The spirits were urging the bean-eater to buy this stock and hold it for a rise.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl.
1948		Amer. Motorist 21-2 17: ‘A motorist,’ says the daily Boston Globe in blowing off steam, ‘is a citizen who thinks he’s obeying the law when he slows down as he passes the stop sign.’ Evidently the erudite bean eater hasn't known many AAA drivers.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1983		Maledicta VII 24: Groups as disparate as Mexicans and Yankees, especially Bostonians, have been called bean eater.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 228: Bean eater, which also is a resident of Boston, a.k.a. Beantown.

2. see also bean-eater

any form of festivity or celebration; thus bean-feaster n.; as v., to make merry.

1743		Proceedings at Assizes (Surrey) 17/2: The very Day this Misfortune happened, there was a Bean-Feast at the Deceased’s House.
[1789		Times 18 July 1/1: The annual bean feast at the long-established House in St. George’s-Fields, which for so many years has been celebrated under that Title, will be held on the 22d of this present July, where the Company of all the Friends will be esteemed as a favour to the House, and compliment to the Stewards].
1837		Comic Almanack Mar. 82: The petition of the Ducks to be presented to Mr. Poulter, for the discontinuance of Bean Feasts.
1879		‘’Arry on the Road’ Punch 9 Aug. 83/1: ’Twas a bit of a beanfeast, you see, and our lot tooled it down in a drag.
1889		J.K. Jerome Three Men in a Boat 217: Another good way we discovered of irritating the aristocratic type of steam launch, was to mistake them for a beanfeast, and ask them if they were Messrs. Cubit’s lot [...] and could they lend us a saucepan.
1895		W. Pett Ridge Minor Dialogues 29: Oh, I say, what a day for a beanfeast!
1897		W.S. Maugham Liza of Lambeth (1966) 77: Yer don’t think I’d ’ave come aht beanfeastin’ with yer if I ’adn’t liked yer?
1899		R. Whiteing No. 5 John Street 250: To-night is the bean-feast of the ‘hands,’ of the myriads in collar.
1901		Marvel XV:386 Mar. 1: Wot are we ’ere for – a bloomin’ beanfeast or a free-and-easy?
1903		J. London People of the Abyss 151: And ‘bean-feasters’ from London, dashing past in coaches, cheered and jeered and shouted insulting things after us.
1908		Otago Witness 4 Mar. 2/3: Shure, he could win it without his taale! [...] It’s a bean feastr fur us, sorr.
1922		Joyce Ulysses 174: All those women and children excursion beanfeast burned and drowned in New York.
1923		W. Holtby Anderby Wold (1981) 86: I think it’s perfectly beastly, making a kind of beanfeast because somebody is going to be shut up in the earth.
1934		D.L. Sayers Nine Tailors (1984) 57: They had some sort of dispute with the Minister about their Good Friday beanfeast.
1966		H.S. Thompson Hell’s Angels (1967) 110: The San Francisco Examiner reported a Hell’s Angels plot to terrorize the annual Lion’s Club bean feed.
1969		N. Cohn Awopbop. (1970) 161: The royalties went on beanfeasts.
1999		Indep. Rev. 10 July 20: I turned up at this snooty beanfeast wearing a collarless shirt.

1. (US) a fool; as adj., stupid.

1917		Eve. World (NY) 5 Mar. 14/1: I don’t want to know you [...] to my way of thinking you’re a bean-head.
1946		T. Thursday ‘Raw, Medium, & Well Done’ in Blue Ribbon Western June 🌐 These Western bean-heads are sick of looking at Fat Girls, Bearded Ladies, and Snake Charmers.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1978		L.K. Truscott IV Dress Gray (1979) 175: You might not have the least idea what to expect ... what this bastard was going to uncork on your skinny shaking little beanhead ass.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 47: beanhead. Beans are small, of course.
1993		L. Rodríguez Always Running (1996) 32: They also had nicknames [...] Rano called her ‘beanhead’.

2. someone with a crew-cut hairstyle.

1959

I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 75: Someone with a crew-cut is a ‘Bean head’, ‘Bullet head’, or ‘Convict number 99’.

(US) a cheap restaurant; as in phr. bean house bull, extravagant stories, ‘tall tales’.

1974		Lieberman & Rhodes CB (2nd edn) 289: Bean house bull — Tall tales.
2001		Entertainment Weekly 22 Jun. n.p.: The most famous coffee shop in America is undoubtedly Monk’s Café, the site of many a manic ‘Seinfeld’ conversation. The second-best-known is the yupscale bean house on ‘Friends,’ where the brooding barista Gunther [...] presides behind the counter, dispensing hefty cups while nursing a crush on Jennifer Aniston’s Rachel.
2002		Denzel Electric Books 🌐 BURBULT’S BAR AND BEAN HOUSE. 14,250 words. A science fiction novelette.

(US gay) oily sweat exuded from the anus or liquid found around the anus of one who constantly breaks wind.

1972

B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.

(US) subsistence; money earned for odd jobs.

1958		Kerouac Dharma Bums 191: You're just drinking too much all the time [...] coming down the hill spending your bean money on wine.
1965		J. Thompson Texas by the Tail (1994) 158: Why do you let this half-baked whore clip you for practically everything but your bean money?
1972		C. Bukowski Erectionsd, Ejaculations, etc. 99: Whether the dear little things need rent and bean money, I don’t know. probably a combo.
1983		G. Spence Of Murder & Madness 41: They were good boys, doing what their mother said, getting the bean money by gathering up the Coca-Cola bottles and old beer bottles along the road, which they traded at the store.
1990		J. Bonner Buffalo Grass 116: You want to go on stealin’ a few cows now and then, or some horses, makin’ bean-money, or do you want to be rich?
2011		J.A. Moreland Place to Lay my Head 357: ‘So, whatcha gonna do with your bean money?’ [...] ‘I already put it in the bank for college’.

(US gay) hair oil, esp. when used to lubricate the penis before sex.

1972

B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.

see separate entry.

see separate entries.

(US) a café, a restaurant.

1859

Wkly Varieties (Boston, MA) 3 Sept. 6/3: The crowd of loafers that nightly congregate in front of Gilson’s ‘bean shop’.

see separate entry.

see beans n.³

see separate entry.

1. (US) Boston, Massachusetts; also attrib.

1885		N.Y. Times 11 Oct. 3: They allude to him as ‘the Beantown manager,’ by way of conveying their knowledge that he comes from the proud city of Boston.
1891		Salt Lake Herald (UT) 13 Sept. 10/2: You should see the trio of maidens, hailing from Beantown.
1901		J. Flynt World of Graft 9: Other cities have similar nicknames. [...] Boston, ‘Bean-Town’.
1904		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 17: Mr. James Britt will start his chirpfest at Boston next week [...] The talented gent from ‘out the portals of gilt’ fears that the culture of the Bean Town might get to him.
1911		Maui News (HI) 16 Dec. 7/1: He was sold to the Boston Red Sox, a misguided scout from Beantown having seen Barney in action.
1920		S. Lewis Main Street (1921) 280: Believe me, it’s us new business men that are running Bean Town today.
1922		S. Lewis Babbitt (1974) 209: It goes right into Beantown, and New York and Washington.
1929		D. Runyon 9 Sept. [synd. col.] Conway [...] is also a lawyer in Beanville [and] as Irish as Paddy’s pig and is getting fat lately as all properous Bostonians do.
1938		D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 5 Mar. 17: Taft [...] Jordan still hits that high note [...] up in Beantown.
1940		J. Archibald ‘Short Order Crook’ in Ten Detective Aces Apr. 🌐 Me and Snooty Piper walk very briskly into the old Colonial wigwam—out in Newton, a suburb of Beantown.
1941		‘Digg Mee’ ‘Observation Post’ in N.Y. Age 20 Sept. 20/7: I cant put you down if you want to be the windy clown from Bean-Town.
1952		N.Y. Herald Trib. 8 Sept. 17/1: Boston has vanished from the language. It’s Beantown now.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 790: bean town – Boston, Massachusetts.
1974		(con. 1960s) R. Price Wanderers 235: Greetings from Beantown.
1993		R. Shell Iced 102: They came from everywhere . . . Bean-town-Boston played hostess to all of them.
2001		TravelApe.com 🌐 Ready for a trip to Boston? Travel Ape provides a tour of ‘Bean-Town’ you can take in your pajamas!
2005		J. Stahl I, Fatty 121: Having tooled all the way from Los Angeles to Beantown, I was so tired [etc.].
2021		P Howard Braywatch 333: I shout, ‘New York City!’ so the entire plane can hear me. ‘Beantown!’.

2. see also beantown

(US) a cheap restaurant, esp. one that has been converted from a disused railway car.

1934		K. Shepard Weep for Me 205: They stopped along the road at lunch time and ate hamburgers and coffee in a bean wagon.
1945		Look 18 Sept. 34: Mary Lou meets her husband in front of the club for breakfast in a beanwagon next to people just going to work.
1955		Life Mag. 3 Jan. 67/1: At the daily shriek of factory whistle, clang of school bell or simple growl of an empty tummy, workaday America rushes eagerly to cafeteria, lunch box, bean wagon or executive dining room for its meridian meal.
1960		E.H. Blaik You Have to Pay the Price 173: I’ve seen some fine football teams that lived out of a suitcase and ate at the corner bean wagon.
1975		L. Dills CB Slanguage 7: Bean wagon: coffee wagon.

(Aus.) very well.

1991		R.G. Barrett Between the Devlin 56: ‘[I]f ever you want a night off or need a hand, give us a yell.’ ‘Righto, mate. As a bean’.
2000		R.G. Barrett Leaving Bondi (2013) [ebook] ‘Everything’s as a bean, Gary. The driver picked me up okay. The hotel’s the grouse’.

worthless, useless.

c.1499		Skelton Bowge of Courte line 95: ‘Pece,’ quod Desyre, ‘ye speke not worth a bene!’.
1555		J. Heywood Epigrams upon Proverbs (3rd hundred) cxxviii: Measure is a mery meane, / But inche, foote, yarde, or ell: / Those measures are not worth a beane / They measure no drynke well.
1582		Stanyhurst Of Virgil his Æneis dedication to Dvnsayne: Artaxerxes [...] beeing so much gallopt, bee placed in thee dedicatory epistle receauing a cuppe of water of a swayne, or elles al is not wurth a beane.
1859, 1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc.