Green’s Dictionary of Slang

pad n.2

[SE pad, a mattress; best known in 20C+ in drug context, it was orig. used for the bed or couch on which an opium smoker could recline; it was then applied to an opium den, and was subseq. a beatnik term for a place where one could smoke cannabis]

1. a bed.

[UK]Hell Upon Earth 6: Pad, a Bed.
[UK]C. Hitchin Regulator 19: The Padd, alias Bed.
[UK]Canting Academy, or the Pedlar’s-French Dict. 112: Is the Bed good or bad? Is the Pad Rum or Quer?
[UK]Life and Character of Moll King 11: Does Jack doss in your Pad now?
[UK]G. Stevens ‘A Cant Song’ Muses Delight 177: Dear Molly, he cried, I will doss in your pad.
[UK](con. 1710–25) Tyburn Chronicle II in Groom (1999) xxix: A Pad A Bed.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: Pad, a Bed.
[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[Ire]C.J. Lever Harry Lorrequer 56: Why you can have ‘Pether,’ my own pad, and a better you never laid leg over.
[UK]Swell’s Night Guide 65: It is common for the donna of the cassey to patter thus to the tramp: – ‘Vot pad vould you like, sir?’ ‘Oh, a two win dodge.’ [Ibid.] 77: Ven the swaddy piped her mug in the morning, he was so stunned with the uglies, that he crapped the pad.
[US]J.H. Green Secret Band of Brothers 114: The word pad means Bed.
[US]Jackson & Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Sl. 64: pad [...] a bed; a place to sleep.
[US]Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 140: Pad. – A bed.
[US]Flash! (Wash., D.C.) 21 Feb. 11/1: dig my pad—Go home to my bed.
[US]C. Himes ‘Make with the Shape’ in Coll. Stories 113: [T]he only logical thing for her to have done after all that workout would have been to fall into the pad and cop some revivifying nods.
[US]L. Durst Jives of Dr. Hepcat (1989) 6: With that fly cat I’ll chill my chat and fall on my righteous pad and cop a nod like mad.
[US]M. Spillane Return of the Hood 10: I had no alibi to begin with unless a warm solo pad could be called one.
[US]‘Iceberg Slim’ Airtight Willie and Me 16: We dirtied plates and copped pads.
[Can](con. 1920s) O.D. Brooks Legs 63: Bryn spotted me yawning. ‘You’d better hit the pad, Legs.’.

2. a place, house or apartment, e.g. a prostitute’s room.

[US]Fortune July 170: There are reefer pads.
[US]‘Hal Ellson’ Duke 117: We got the mattresses into our pad.
[US]W. Brown Monkey On My Back (1954) 107: A pad was a cellar dive, usually run by one of the older boys in the neighborhood. He’d have maybe two or three girls in and send the word around [...] Any cat who wanted to drop in could do so if he anted up a half buck.
[UK]‘Raymond Thorp’ Viper 109: "The man from Oxford! as Anthony became known around the clubs and pads.
[US]Baltimore Sun (MD) Sun. Mag. 4 Dec. 9/1: [A]lthough she pounded some ground at most of the blasts with Bugsy, the kook always blew the pad with a grub.
[UK]P. Willmott Adolescent Boys of East London (1969) 175: I might [...] go round my friend’s pad for an all-night session.
[US]D. Goines Street Players 9: Just ’cause you got this pad up here, you must think that makes you one hell of a pimp.
[US]T. Wolfe Bonfire of Vanities 611: Millionairess Maria entertained McCoy in $331-a-month tryst pad.
[US](con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 103: Jack found the pad, knocked, no answer.
[Aus]J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 58: Uncle Angus was ringing up all the way from Melbourne where he had his pad which was a very large and flash joint somewhere toffy like South Yarra.
[Scot]I. Welsh Filth 148: They’re probably in some shitehoose of a pad in Leith with a carry-oot of Tennants Super.
[UK]Indep. on Sun. Real Life 16 Jan. 3: The modern batchelor pad is not a modest proposition.
[SA]Sun. Times (S.Afr.) 27 Jan. 24: A pal’s pad in north London.
[UK]Independent 24 Jan. 37/2: When I look at our pad, I often think of The Avengers.
[US]C.D. Rosales Word Is Bone [ebook] She don’t come round the pad when I drink.
[US]J. Ellroy Widespread Panic 19: [heading] liberace’s swank swish pad.

3. (also pads) a padded cell, a strip cell.

[UK]E. Raymond Marsh 375: The doctor’s shout, ‘Shove him in the Pad. That’ll teach him!’ was whipping his brain to a frenzy.
[Ire]J. Phelan Letters from the Big House 35: In a pad last night. A pad. Couldn’t find me there, could you? No ventilators to the pad.
[Ire]P. Howard The Joy (2015) [ebook] ‘I don’t give a bollix if they put me in the pad’.
[UK]Indep. Rev. 11 July 6: In a mental hospital as a patient, where she had been in the ‘pads’ — a padded cell.

4. (US black/drugs) an apartment used for smoking and selling of marijuana.

[US]D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam News 27 Aug. A6: Weed smokers are due for the next big purge with the G-Men rounding up certain [...] ‘pad’ operators as distributing points for the reefer traffic.

5. (US Black) a speakeasy.

[US]Pittsburgh Courier (PA) 14 June 7/3: He showed her how to get ‘lushed’ (intoxicated) . . . How to ‘drag a roach’ (smoke a marihuana cigarette) and how to ‘fall to a pad’ (Drop into a speakeasy).

6. (US Und.) a cell.

[US]Goldin et al. DAUL 151/2: Pad. (Chiefly in South; borrowed from Negro jargon) [...] 2. (P) A cell.
[US]C. Cooper Jr Farm (1968) 48: I put the radio and other junk under my arm and started for my pad.
[UK]J. Morton Lowspeak 110: Padmate – a cell mate.
[US]Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 7: House An inmate’s prison cell [...] An inmate’s house is his living area where his bed and personal property are kept. (Archaic: den, pad).
[UK]Guardian 29 Apr. 14: After the attack, Stewart [...] drew a swastika on the cell wall and wrote ‘Just killed me padmate’.

7. see padding ken under pad v.1

In compounds

padhouse (n.)

(US black) one’s house, one’s home.

[UK]Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 848: [...] since ca. 1958.
pad money (n.) (also pad dough)

(US) enough money to obtain accommodation for one night or admission into an opium den.

[US]Number 1500 Life In Sing Sing 256: Pad Money. Money for lodgings.
[US] ‘Jargon of the Und.’ in DN V 457: Pad money, Money for a night’s lodgings or for admission into an opium den.
[US]Howsley Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
[US]Goldin et al. DAUL 151/2: Pad-dough. (Central and Southern U. S.) Money for rent or lodgings.
[US]J.E. Schmidt Narcotics Lingo and Lore.

In phrases

pad down (v.) (also pad out)

(US) to go to bed, to sleep.

[US]W. Brown Monkey On My Back (1954) 91: Occasionally youngsters who [...] had trouble at home would spend the night here ‘padding down’ in the corridors.
[US]‘Paul Merchant’ ‘Sex Gang’ in Pulling a Train’ (2012) [ebook] I need a place to pad out for about a week.
[US]W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 129: He had been padding down in the basement of a condemned tenement.
pad of many windows (n.)

(US black) a prison.

D. Burley N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 21 Mar. 16: ‘They took me to th’ pad of many windows’.
pad of togs-in-the-rough (n.) (also pad of togs-in-rough) [togs n. (1) + SE in the rough, unfinished]

(US black/Southern) a tailor’s shop.

[US]M.H. Boulware Jive and Sl. n.p.: Pad of togs-in-rough ... Tailor’s shop.
repent pad (n.) [a woman who visits may ‘repent of her sins’ later]

(US black) a bachelor’s apartment.

[US]D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 16: He’d jived me into laying a broom to that repent pad.