Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. a complaint.

1839		Chemung Democrat (N.Y.) 25 Dec. n.p.: So take the hint without a kick, and shut the open door [DA].
1863		in Mont. Hist. Society Contrib. III (1900) 326: As the coat belonged to him, I had no kick coming [DA].
1879		Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 22 Nov. 3/3: The girl set up a most energetic ‘kick’. She ‘didn’t want no man in the cell with her’.
1887		G. Devol Forty Years a Gambler 78: He set up a kick, and said he had been cheated.
1889		Dead Bird (Sydney) 24 Aug. 7/4: Kilrain’s seconds lost a fine opportunity when they did not make a vigorous kick at the time that Sullivan jumped on him.
1896		J.F. Lillard Poker Stories 59: Sometimes there’d be a kick and the captain would get hot.
1900		Flynt & Walton Powers That Prey 170: There’s a push o’ guns in this town that thinks flatties don’t count, that there won’t be much of a kick when one of ’em ’s keeled over.
1906		S. Ford Shorty McCabe 20: There wasn’t any use for Homer to register a kick on the bill-of-fare. She was too busy tellin’ him how much good the things would do him.
1915		Daily Trib. (Bismarck, N.D.) 21 Apr. 11/1: I sure have a kick coming and so have a lot of other girls.
1924		‘Digit’ Confessions of a Twentieth Century Hobo 189: My biggest ‘kick’ against America is the Press.
1930		‘Leslie Charteris’ Enter the Saint 33: [He’s] leaving England so soon he could hardly make a kick.
1947		B. Schulberg Harder They Fall (1971) 254: I haven’t got any kicks against Nick.
1955		D. Niland Shiralee 87: You haven’t had kick from her?
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 806: kick – An objection.
1970		E. Tidyman Shaft 212: Will there be a kick later?
2002		D.H. Sterry Chicken (2003) 9: No matter how much kick I put in my scream, my mom and dad ignore me.

2. trouble.

1897		E.W. Townsend Chimmie Fadden 41: Say, I ain’t got no kick coming t’ me: what Miss Fannie tinks goes.
1905		H. Green Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 140: It was nothing but kick all the time.
1920		Ade Hand-made Fables 4: If he chooses to keep the Electric Lights turned on, the People living ten miles away have no Kick coming.
1937		Duckett & Staple ‘Double Feature’ in N.Y. Age 6 Mar. 7/1: Anyone uptown who does come across with protection money without first putting up some kick is downright foolish.

3. a worry or concern.

1930		R. Whitfield Green Ice (1988) 16: The big kick was that either he’d done for Dot Ellis, or he knew more about it than I did. Perhaps a bigger kick was that he had wised me up.
1956		H. Ellison ‘Johnny Slice’s Stoolie’ in Deadly Streets (1983) 80: ‘So whadda we gonna do?’ asked Lazear. Still on the same kick.