Green’s Dictionary of Slang

slop n.1

also slops
[SE slop, liquid or semi-liquid food, esp. as served to invalids]

1. as a drink.

(a) a non-alcoholic drink taken for medicinal purposes.

[UK]R. L’Estrange cited in Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues VI 254/2: The sick husband here wanted for neither slops nor doctors.

(b) (later use Aus.) tea; thus slop-bowl, a teacup.

[UK]Cibber Double Gallant IV i: I wou’d advise you to throw away your Juleps, your Cordials, and Slops.
[UK] in D’Urfey Pills to Purge Melancholy II 138: Pox what care I, drink your Slops ’till you dye.
[UK]J. Poulter Discoveries (1774) 42: I am a Locker, and a Dudder, and Fencer of Slop; I leave Goods at a House, and borrow Money on them, pretending they are Rum Goods, Goods made in London, and sell Tea.
[Scot]Falkirk Herald 30 May 3/6: I put it in my slop-bowl to soak.
[UK]Sporting Mag. Mar. I 349/2: Those degrading slops, tea, coffee, or chocolate. [Ibid.] May II 125/2: Let fops with ladies lisp o’er slops and tea.
[UK]Sporting Mag. Apr. XVI 26/1: Got up at eight o’clock [...] drank two dishes of slop with spouse.
[Aus]Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang. in McLachlan (1964) 264: I shook a chest of slop, I stole a chest of tea.
[Ire]‘A Real Paddy’ Real Life in Ireland 60: As empty as a member mug when it is half full of slops.
[UK]G. Smeeton Doings in London 154: A chest full of slop (tea), £15.
[Ire] ‘The Teetotal Society’ Dublin Comic Songster 86: He got dull and mopish, drank slops to satiety.
[UK]R.S. Surtees Young Tom Hall (1926) 73: We’ll have a light breakfast here — slops (catlap, you know) and so on — then drive there and have a regular tuck-out.
[UK]Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. 95: SLOPS, chests or packages of tea.
[US]Matsell Vocabulum.
[UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.
[UK]Sl. Dict.
[Aus]Queenscliff Sentinel (Vic.) 30 Mar. 2/6: He got dull and mopish, drank slops to satiety, / Which made the dame curse the tee-totalist society.
[Aus]Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 75: Slops, [...] an effeminate drink.
[Aus]D. Niland Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1958) 218: ‘Dice that slops, you sheilas, there’s a fight on’ [...] Merle, draining her cup, started after them.
[NZ]G. Johnston Fish Factory 108: You’d have been lining up now for a mug of slops in the clink.

(c) attrib. use of sense 1a.

[UK]Bridges Burlesque Homer (3rd edn) 205: One kept a slop-shop in Rag-fair.
[UK]‘J.H. Ross’ Mint (1955) 53: Slop tea tastes better from a cup than from a mug.

(d) (Aus./N.Z./US) usu. in pl., alcohol; usu. beer; also attrib.

[US]Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 5 Mar. n.p.: A curse on root beer and slops, I hope they’ll burst their corking.
[Aus]J. Armour Diggings, the Bush, and Melbourne 15: These [shearers] having been made debtors for ‘slop’ goods, and for liquor supplied to them at the rate of twenty shillings a bottle, felt themselves on the wrong side of the law for showing airs, having no money to pay off their score [...] they gladly for the sake of two bottles more agreed to the terms he now imposed on them.
[US]Record Union (Sacramento, CA) 26 Oct. 4/3: He called for a drink of belly-wash (which is the vulgar term [...] used to designate temperance drinks) and the barkeeper [...] dished him up a glass of slops from beneath the counter.
[US]Times (Shreveport, LA) 12 May 3/5: The money is always spent on ‘slop’ or ‘skat’.
[US]C. Connors Bowery Life [ebook] A big chunk uv corned beef an’ cabbage, t'ree times er day, an’ erbout sixteen scuttles uv slops at Barney’s.
[US]Salt Lake Herald (UT) 30 Mar. 4/5: He is full of [...] slops.
[US] DN V 42: Slops, beer.
[US] in ‘Jargon of the Und.’ in DN V.
[UK]R. Carr Rampant Age 223: There’s a wop down on Vine Street puttin’ out dago red for three dollars a gallon. One helluva wallop in the slop, too.
[US]G. Milburn Hobo’s Hornbook 34: There was Sammy Slop and Philly Hop.
[US]Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 173: slops.—Beer.
[Aus]Townsville Daily Bull. (Qld) 7 July 11/6: Spare me days, you’d be the world dishin’ out slops to them ringers.
[US]Mencken Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: Beer is slops.
[Aus] L. L. Glassop We Were the Rats 120: Gee if I ever get ter Germany I’ll have a go at their slops. In one er them beer gardens with them big mugs.
[Aus]L. Glassop Lucky Palmer 5: Keep your shirt on. There’s no harm in having a jug of slops, now is there?
[UK]I, Mobster 60: Keep on their tail to see they didn’t hand you nothing but needled slop.
[Aus]T.A.G. Hungerford Riverslake 197: They reckon that’s what sent him onto the slops.
[NZ]G. Slatter Gun in My Hand 226: All they do now is cart slops around in tankers and squirt it out of plastic tubes.
[US]F. Elli Riot (1967) 243: Lousy slop gives me heartburn.
[Aus]S. Gore Holy Smoke 47: A schooner of slops apiece in their mitts!
[US]R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 116: ‘What’s the name of that slop you and Charlie were drinking?’.
[Aus]John O’Grady It’s Your Shout, Mate! 91: The others voted it ‘a good drop o’ slops’.
[UK]A. Bleasdale ‘George’s last Ride’ in Boys from the Blackstuff (1985) [TV script] 264: Those dick-heads over there slipped some speed into the slops.
[Aus]C. Bowles G’DAY 108: Marshall has his buck's night the night before the wedding. The dillbrains he is with get him on the slops and put him on a train.
[NZ]McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 192: slop back Guzzle booze or slops, beer ANZ from 1920s.

(e) (US) food in general, usu. second-rate; also attrib.

[UK]R. Barham ‘Witches’ Frolic’ in Ingoldsby Legends (1840) 177: Instead of our slops / They had cutlets and chops.
[UK]Dly News (London) 19 Aug. 3/3: Inmates of the workhouse were [...] deprived of their beer and cheese [substituting] seventeen slop meals a week for their former substantial food.
[Ind]Delhi Sketch Bk 1 Mar. 35/1: Major Walters: Let me advise you to take very weak broth [...] Ensign Fresh: I hate your slops.
[US]J.W. Haley Rebel Yell and The Yankee Hurrah (1985) 276: We tried to fill up on slops, but call it soup because that title makes it seem more filling.
[Aus]Mercury (Hobart, Tas.) 12 Dec. 3/3: You cannot purchase flour or anything in the shape of slops here.
[UK]Kipling ‘Tommy’ in Barrack-Room Ballads (1893) 149: Don’t mess about the cook-room slops, but prove it to our face.
[UK] ‘’Arry on Harry’ in Punch 24 Aug. 90/2: All yer mincey-wince mealy-mouthed haspirates is nothing but slop and cold scran.
[US]J. London People of the Abyss 75: They each drank two pints of it, and I assure you that it was slops. It resembled tea less than lager beer resembles champagne.
[US]S. Kingsley Dead End Act III: dippy: Dey git mickeys in rifawm school, don’ dey? t.b.: Slop, dey git slop.
[UK]B. Bennett ‘The Call of the Yukon’ in Billy Bennett’s Fourth Souvenir Budget 7: Call me early, mother dear, / For I’m to be Queen of the slops.
[US](con. 1944) N. Mailer Naked and Dead 70: Whatever slop had been delivered to them that day.
[UK]I, Mobster 27: They can stand over you [...] making sure that you eat every bit of slop on your tray.
[UK]I. & P. Opie Lore and Lang. of Schoolchildren (1977) 182: School dinners are [...] ‘slops’.
[US]E. De Roo Big Rumble 118: The old ladies got slop ready.
[US]M. Rumaker Exit 3 and Other Stories 119: Slops done.
[US]J. Wambaugh Choirboys (1976) 37: Not like that nigger slop you see in all these greasy spoons in town.
[NZ]H. Beaton Outside In I i: C’mon princess. Let’s get to the slops.
[Aus]P. Corris ‘Marriages Are Made in Heaven’ in Heroin Annie (e-book) A minute ago you were going to cook some slop for me .
[Ire]P. McCabe Breakfast on Pluto 161: Hughie’s idea of running a pub seemed to be to pack them in and throw any sort of old slops at them.
[US](con. 1975–6) E. Little Steel Toes 12: I’m shoveling the slop into my mouth as fast as possible.
[US] N. Flexner Disassembled Man [ebook] Normally I would have politely declined the slop that Ruth had concoted, but I was hungrier than a fasting Ethiopian.

(f) attrib. use of sense 1d.

[Aus]Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 76: Slop Shop, a shop whom inferior tailoring and clothing are to be had.
[UK]Sporting Times 11 Feb. 3/1: [I] have sampled tinned rabbit, kidney soup, bacon and onions, in a slop-basin in the very chops of the Channel.
[US]Eble Campus Sl. Mar. 6: slop shop – any campus snack bar.

(g) (US) coffee.

[US]Sun (NY) 28 Mar. 2/6: ‘Slop and sinkers,’ means coffee and doughnuts.
[US]J. Conroy Disinherited 168: I git tard o’ Lena’s slop.
[US]G. Cuomo Among Thieves 181: Just having a cup of slop.

(h) (Aus.) brandy.

[US](con. WWII) J.O. Killens And Then We Heard The Thunder (1964) 369: ‘I have some slop if you’d care to have some.’ He said ‘Slop?’ She said, ‘Whiskey, I mean brandy.’.

2. in senses of emotional or intellectual weakness.

(a) sentimentality, mawkish emotion.

[UK]High Life in London 17 Feb. 5/4: [T]he Morning Post; with its fashionable slop [...] the Long Shore (Ledger), and Tap-tub (Morning Advertiser) .
‘Mark Twain’ Letter from Hawaii (1967) 33: You can go on writing that slop about balmy breezes and fragrant flowers, and all that sort of truck.
[UK] N.Y. Sporting Times 3 Oct. 9: The crank who created a sensation in the N.Y. Cathedral last Sunday morning by shouting to Archbishop Corigan: ‘Out of my way, Pontius Pilate! I am the Lord’s anointed and you are not in it with me,’ has evidently been feeding on the slop.
[UK] ‘’Arry on Spring-Time and Sport’ in Punch 18 Apr. 184/3: Sentiment’s slop as I spurn.
[US]E. Pound letter Mar. in Paige (1971) 55: ‘The difference between enthusiastic slop and great art’ – there’s a text to preach on in your glorious unfettered desert for the next forty years.
[UK]R. Carr Rampant Age 194: You mushy mutts make me sick! [...] Christ, what slop!
[UK](con. 1937) R. Westerby Mad in Pursuit 217: All this magazine rot, all the movie slop and crooning about it – wrapping Luv up in silver paper.
[UK]G.W. Target Teachers (1962) 243: Well it’s all a lot of slop – and I’ve had a gutful, right up to there.
[Ire](con. 1930s) M. Verdon Shawlies, Echo Boys, the Marsh and the Lanes 131: We had no interest in women being kissed. That was all slop. We wanted action.

(b) attrib. use of sense 2a.

[UK]N. Cohn Awopbop. (1970) 30: There have been more slop-ballads as singles and his film career has ground to a temporary halt.

(c) nonsensical talk.

[UK] ‘’Arry on the Battle of Life’ in Punch 21 Sept. in P. Marks (2006) 136: Mere ink-slinging slop.
[UK] ‘’Arry on Blues and Bluestockings’ in Punch 21 Mar. 135/1: It’s fair monstrous, the way we get worried and vext [...] / by Women’s Rights ’umbug and slop.
[US]E. O’Neill Hairy Ape Act VI: We don’t want to listen to no more of that slop.
[US]E. Pound letter 27 Mar. in Paige (1971) 231: Agree that transition was mainly slop, but the review was useful.
[US]‘Ed Lacy’ Men from the Boys (1967) 20: You really believe this slop you’re handing me? [Ibid.] 21: Where do you get that if-you-don’t-mind slop?
[US]T. Alibrandi Custody 279: When someone throws that kind of slop around, they don’t feel very good about themselves.
[US](con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 12: A talkathon – bad work – pure mass-witness slop.
[US]Mad mag. Aug. 8: New Age slop like Enya that would make a unicorn throw up its moonbeams.

(d) a weak, insignificant person.

[UK]R. Llewellyn None But the Lonely Heart 180: You get shoved around [...] People think you’re a slop, and they treat you like one. [Ibid.] 263: He was no slop with his mitts. [Ibid.] 350: You pudding headed old slop, you.

3. the essence, the ‘daylights’.

[US]‘Ed Lacy’ Best that Ever Did It (1957) 121: I think you’ll beat the slop out of Cliff, make life miserable for the girl.
[US]‘Ed Lacy’ Lead With Your Left (1958) 88: I’ll beat the slop out of you if you keep annoying Miss Henderson.

In compounds

slop and flop (n.) [flop n.5 (2)]

(US tramp) food and accommodation, esp. in transient camps, typically those set up by an oil-drilling company.

[US](con. 1920s) J. Thompson South of Heaven (1994) 52: Your wages were docked a dollar day for room and board (’slop and flop’).
slopchute (n.) [note WWII USN slop chute, a chute through which garbage is propelled into the ocean; also the barrack canteen]

(US gay) the anus.

[US] (ref. to late 1960s) B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 19: the rectal opening, anus [...] slopchute (late ’60s).
slop detail (n.)

(US) a menial task.

[US]E. Hunter ‘Vicious Circle’ in Jungle Kids (1967) 31: He was getting slop details.
slophouse (n.) [play on flophouse n. (1)]

(US Und.) a cheap restaurant.

[US] in P. Smith Letter from My Father (1978) 371: The bowery slop houses.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
[US]Delta Democratic-Times (Greenville, MS) 16 June 2/3: Dr R.L. Jordan said [...] he wished to apologize for calling balck-owned restaurants [...] ‘slophouses’.
[US]Miami News (FL) 22 Dec. 1/1: Bernie is proprietor and manager of the Worst Food in Oregon, a seedy little slophouse between Stinkingwater Creek and Calamity Pass.
slop-jaw (n.)

a garrulous, self-opinionated talker.

[US]Kerouac On the Road (The Orig. Scroll) (2007) 216: Ah, our holy American slop-jaws in Washington are planning further inconveniences.
[US]Kerouac On The Road (1972) 110: Ah, our holy American slop-jaws in Washington are planning further inconveniences.
slop joint (n.) (also slop chute) [joint n. (3b); note US milit. slop chute, the barracks/base canteen]

a cheap, unappetizing restaurant.

[US]N.I. White Amer. Negro Folk-Songs 326: [reported from Auburn, AL, 1915–1916] I went down to de ‘slop’ joint / Wid a razor in my han’. / Open up dis gang way, / I’m lookin’ fo’ my man.
[US]Howsley Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl.
[US]H. Rhodes Chosen Few (1966) 19: I’ll hafta buy him a brew at the slopchute one night soon.

In phrases

get slops (v.)

(Aus.) to be punished, thus give slops, to punish.

[Aus]Queenslander (Brisbane) 16 Oct. 12/6: Such little games don’t at all times go down with handicappers, but it did in one instance, when a certain horse from this quarter ‘got slops’.
[Aus]Queanbeyan Age (NSW) 22 Aug. 2/4: A successful wallaby drive [...] took place about a fortnight back; the marsupials ‘got slops’.
[Aus]Dead Bird (Sydney) 3 May 2/1: My wife has given me slops about the powder on my shoulder.
[Aus]Dubbo Liberal (NSW) 17 June 3/3: When a resident ‘got slops,’ / The ‘Trinity’ he’d blame.
[Aus]Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Sept. 15/4: [H]e who married the Court’s nice girl-ward without the Court’s permission ‘got slops’ if the Court could capture him. He was imprisoned for an indefinite period, and talked to death by the Court at intervals, [...] and otherwise knocked endways.
[Aus]‘Dads Wayback’ in Sun. Times (Sydney) 7 Sept. 5/5: ‘[T]hey’d [i.e. female judges or magistrates] give some o’ ther gals as now go laughin’ out of Court perticler slops’.
[Aus]Williamstown Chron. (Vic.) 14 Mar. 3/3: Some of his colleagues got ‘slops’ from their Footscray comrades.
[Aus]Indep. (Footscray, Vic.) 18 Mar. 3/2: Smith’s bowling encountered much ‘paste’, or rather it ‘got slops,’ a rather disappointing feature just as the final is approaching.
[Aus]Cairns Post (Qld) 16 June 7/3: I got slops from the missus who wanted to know what kept me.
slop out (v.) [SE slop, to spill, to pour]

(UK prison) to empty a chamberpot, also as n.; thus slopping-out/slops out n.; in weaker sense, to clean up one’s cell (see cite 2001).

[Ire]B. Behan ‘I Became a Borstal Boy’ in After the Wake (1981) 24: I heard the shout ‘Right, all doors open. Slop out’.
[UK]‘Charles Raven’ Und. Nights 100: I learned that at Parkstone, too, after a tiff at Slops Out.
[Ire](con. 1940s) B. Behan Borstal Boy 53: Mornings we were wakened at six and slopped out.
[UK]Clement & La Frenais ‘New Faces, Old Hands’ Porridge [TV script] Eight o’clock slop out, eight ten breakfast.
[NZ]A. Duff One Night Out Stealing 28: The stink of forty-odd men slopping out at the same time each morning was terrible.
[UK]J. Hoskison Inside 21: OK [...] As long as you slop out for me in the morning.
[NZ]D. Looser ‘Boob Jargon’ in NZEJ 13 35: slop outv. To empty out cell chamberpots.
[NZ]D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 170/1: slop out v. to clean one’s cell, to empty one’s cell chamberpot.
[UK]N. ‘Razor’ Smith A Few Kind Words and a Loaded Gun 128: Slopping-out was a terrible, degrading business that was still going on in British prisons up until the late 1990s.
[UK]J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 617: Tronk was piss and slopping out [...] being held down by Lag A so that Lags B, C, D [...] could travel the Bovril Turnpike.
slop (over) (v.) [late 17C SE slop, to slobber (over)]

to treat with exaggerated, mawkish sentiment.

Browne Works (1867) 117: The prevailin weakness of most public men is to slop over! [DA].
[US]Congressional Globe 23 Jan. 524/2: Amnesty [...] is magnanimity slopping over [DA].
[US]Harper’s Mag. lxxviii 818: One of his great distinctions was his moderation... he never slopped over [F&H].
D.G. Phillips A Woman’s Ventures 103: She felt that she had told the facts, and that she had avoided ‘slopping over’ [DA].
[US]N.Y. Eve. Post 10 Mar. n.p.: It may be that a republic which unguardedly slopped over in connection with the wrong man feels particularly tongue-tied when it comes to expressing thanks to the right man.
[US](con. 1900s) S. Lewis Elmer Gantry 183: Then he goes [...] and slops all over some old dame that’s probably saved already, that you, by golly! couldn’t unsave with a carload of gin.
slop up (v.) (also slop it up) [SE slop up, to absorb]

to drink heavily, to become drunk.

[US]J. London ‘’Frisco Kid’s Story’ in High School Aegis X 15 Feb. 2–3: Leary Joe got to sloppin’ up on white line, an wuz orioide.
[US]J. Flynt World of Graft 72: I beg here, we all beg, an’ we slop up ev’ry now an’ then, too.
[US]Wellington Scott Seventeen Years in the Und. 64: The illgotten gains are spent ‘slopping up’ (getting drunk) in the jungles (outside the city).
[US]J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 96: No use takin’ a bunch of thirsty bums along and stealin’ money for them to slop up in some saloon.
[US]‘Dean Stiff’ Milk and Honey Route 117: A hobo may go to town with a stake and blow it during two or three nights of slopping it up.
[US]Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
[US]N. Cassady letter in Charters (1993) 201: I got my drinks and still had a short period of grace in which to slop up more.
[US]Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 818: slop up – To become intoxicated.
[US]J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 38: He slopped up some more beer.