bounce n.1
1. as an image of verbal energy, esp. self-promoting.
(a) a braggart, a swaggerer.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Dict. Canting Crew n.p.: A meer Bounce, a Swaggering Fellow. | |
| New Canting Dict. [as cit. c.1698]. | |
| , , , | | Universal Etym. Eng. Dict. [as cit. c.1698]. |
| Sporting Mag. Apr. XVI 26/1: Met Bob Blunderbuss and Bob Bounce, going about on their prads. | |
| Key to the Picture of the Fancy going to a Fight 21: He is an empty bounce, and wished to cut a dash without knowing any thing [...] of driving . | |
| London Mag. Feb. 49/2: The father was reckoned ‘a very great bounce,’ and had the cognomen of ‘Bouncing Jack’ accordingly. | |
| Sam Sly 6 Jan. 3/1: He advises the curly-headed butcher, who is known by the aliases of [...] ‘Fighter,’ and ‘Bounce,’ not to strut so much about the Mile-end-road, boasting of what he can do. | |
| New and Improved Flash Dict. n.p.: Bennickey bounce; a great swaggerer. He was bennicky bouncems there; he swaggered bravely there. | |
| Sl. Dict. 94: Bounce [...] a bully. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | (con. WWI) Flesh in Armour 123: A big man without much sense, a bit of a bounce. |
(b) a boast, a self-aggrandizing lie.
| Maronides (1678) VI 44: Proud Pedants, old Arse-whipping Dunces, / That nothing know but make great bounces. | |
| ‘Battel without Bloodshed’ in Writings (1704) 123: Meer Crackfarts, who only go out to make Bounces. | |
| A Compleat and Humorous Account of all the Remarkable Clubs (1756) 83: Alexander Bounce, a fencing-master. | |
 | Lover (1723) 1 April 93: But this is supposed to be only a Bounce; for the Gothamites begin to perceive [...] that the Crabtrees are not such cunning Curs as they pretend. | |
| Haunch of Venison 5: But hold – let us pause – Don’t I hear you pronounce / This tale of the Bacon a damnable bounce? / Well, suppose it a bounce; sure a Poet may try, / By a bounce now and then, to get courage to fly. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Highland Reel 55: This, Sir, I thought a bounce, till this proof he has given me. | |
| Sporting Mag. July VIII 227/1: ‘Your own, I suppose – or is it in waiting?’ / ‘Why whose should it be?’ cried I with a flounce; / ‘I get these things often’ – but that was a bounce. | |
| Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress 27: The shiners! Lord, Lord, what a bounce do I say! / As if we could hope to have rags done away. | |
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 20 Feb. 29/1: In order to show you that it is no bounce on my part [...] Pierce Egan has authority from my friends, to make a match on my behalf for ONE THOUSAND POUNDS a-side. | |
| Satirist & Sporting Chron. (Sydney) 25 Mar. 3/3: The ‘Cricketer’ further says [...] he can fill a Hundred Tuns of Prime English Ale at any convenient notice [...] This is no bounce. | |
| Mirror of Lit. 7 Sept. 380/2: A blaze of triumph Drury’s bills announce, / [...] / Alluding to the manager’s grand bounce, / That ‘Bunn and Balfe are getting on like blazes’. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | letter in N.Y. Clipper 18 Feb. 3/3: Such is my confidence in English vessels, and my distrust of American ‘bounce,’ that I am prepared to lay £5 . | |
| Kate Coventry (1865) 4: Only tell a man you think him good looking, and he falls in love with you directly; or if that is too great a bounce [...] you need only hint that he rides gallantly. | |
| Western Dly Press 20 Aug. 3/7: I go for bunkum and bounce and clap-trap. | |
| My Secret Life (1966) I 51: He wondered if he really did see any signs in my face, or whether it was bounce. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 17 June 1/1: Neither bounce, belligerency, nor beer will win the Tamworth election. | |
| Sappers and Miners 261: I have heard say that he swore he’d have that dog’s life; but I’m sure it was all bounce. |
(c) a well-dressed braggart and/or swindler.
| Vocab. of the Flash Lang. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| Finish to the Adventures of Tom and Jerry (1889) 193: You are nothing more than some journeyman body-snatcher, in a borrowed suit of togs, to come the bounce. | |
| , | | Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. |
| , , | | Sl. Dict. |
| Sl. Dict. |
(d) (orig. Aus.) cheek, impudence; arrogance; (overt) self-confidence.
| New South Wales II 233: The person they palm the robbery upon is always some simple country fellow, with but little bounce or gammon in his composition. | |
| Australian (Sydney) 12 May 3/4: [He] used very gross and abusive language to his mistress, who told him to let her have no more of his ‘bounce,’ or he would find himself in the wrong box. | |
| Australian (Sydney) 15 Nov. 2/3: Spinks, in reply to the language he was making use of, said, ‘Don’t let’s have any of your bounce’. | |
| Worcs Chron. 6 Sept. 2/2: He thought a gentle rubbing down with an oaken towel would be effectual in calming the overflow of bounce. | |
| ‘She Sleeps With A Tall Grenadier’ in Gentleman’s Spicey Songster 24: Come, none of your bounce, but take care / How you deem me inconstant and frail. | |
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 6 Sept. 2/1: Not so fast, Mr. Davis, pray do not forget, / In spite of your bounce, you’ve not won it yet. | |
| Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 26 Sept. 3/3: I am glad to find a writer like ‘Hotspur’ taking in hand such unlimited bounce as that with regard to ‘Peter Wilkins’ . | |
| Paved with Gold 51: I shouldn’t wonder now if this young ’un had bounce enough to tell us his mother had been cook in the same place. | |
| Rogue’s Progress (1966) 196: Gentility in poverty knows the knock well, there is no bounce about it, it is modesty personnified. | |
| , , | | Sl. Dict. |
| Letters by an Odd Boy 26: If A would put a stopper on his brag, and B would only shut up his bounce. | |
| Wkly Times (Melbourne) 2 Aug. 9/5: Their bounce wouldn’t be a bit less shabby than the bounce of a few of these broken-down Melbourne duffers in London, who, mind you, were altogether ‘without honour in their own country.’ . | |
| Oxford Jrnl 16 Feb. 5/6: If there wasn’t an unlimited amount of ‘bounce’ [...] on that particular pccasion, it was, at any rate, what Mr Sam Weller would term a ‘werry good imitation of it’. | |
| Long Odds II 175: ‘I landed the biggest stake I ever won by bounce’. | |
| Adventures in Aus. 71: He was a shrewd, sensible, kind-hearted man; no ‘stuck-uppedness’ about him, no ‘bounce,’ to use a colonial term. | |
| Twenty-Five Years of Detective Life I 155: Disregarding all this bounce I requested one of the railway servants to call in my colleague. | |
| Boy’s Own Paper 4 May 482: Bounce, pure bounce! | |
| Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 2 Mar. 8/5: I have no doubt he mingled among the ‘Sydney ducks’ on the Pacific Slope, and if ‘blow’ and ‘bounce’ could do it ho would earn a living. | |
| Harrovians 32: Ratford’s vulgar bounce was in marked contrast to Parry’s reposeful dignity. | |
| Truth (Melbourne) 14 Feb. 5/7: A mob of these nonentities [...] arose with much bombastic bounce. | |
| Digger Dialects 13: bounce (n.) — Arrogance. | |
| (con. WWI) Gloss. of Sl. [...] in the A.I.F. 1921–1924 (rev. t/s) n.p.: bounce Arrogance; ‘to come on the bounce’ – make an arrogant demand. | |
| King Cole 114: He knew that his youth had been buried with his wife. He was a different man now; all the bounce was out of him. | |
| Public School Slang 39: Impudence [...] bounce. | |
| Cockney Dialect and Sl. 92: Bounce ‘impudence’ [...] as in full o’ bounce. | |
| Black Mass 322: Kevin Weeks kept up the bounce and bluster he’d displayed publicly as a supreme Bulger loyalist. |
(e) mid-19C a public display.
| Oxberry's Budget of Plays 108/2: I went into a tavern once / As I felt rather merry. / So I resolved to make a bounce, / And ordered lots of sherry. |
(f) energy.
| Life and Adventures of a Cheap Jack 237: He’ll take all the bounce out of you this time. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Feb. 4/4: Why are his assertions disregarded, and his ‘bounce’ treated with contempt? | |
| City Editor 138: Some press agents seem to possess vastly more bounce and shrewdness than even the best newspaper man. | |
| N.Y. Herald Trib. Book Rev. 6 Apr. 1: Occasionally a ringer for Mark Twain’s Colonel Mulberry Sellers, he is also himself, a man of curious learning and unfailing bounce [W&F]. | |
| Robbers (2001) 29: Eddie on the drift, aimless, braced by the other’s bounce. |
2. in criminal contexts.
(a) (UK Und.) a confidence trick, a swindle.
| (con. 1840s–50s) London Labour and London Poor (1968) I 424/2: Then the bagman goes off with all the things, leaving the other to do the bounce, and he keeps singing out for the horse and cart with the load of crockery, gammoning there is one [...] then hurries down to quicken his cart-driver’s movements, and hooks it. |
(b) (US Und.) arrest and subsequent trial.
| ‘The King in Yellow’ in Spanish Blood (1946) 50: You can go to bed and stay till morning or you can take the bounce. | |
| Widespread Panic 183: All that shakedown shit for one dope bounce? |
(c) (US prison) a sentence.
| letter in Joint (1972) 161: Hopefully I look for a 3 to 5 bounce. | |
| (con. 1949) True Confessions (1979) 85: That’s a gas-chamber bounce. [Ibid.] 95: ‘He’ll shoot it out.’ ‘You can bet your sweet ass he will with a 207. That’s a gas chamber bounce.’. | |
| (con. early 1950s) L.A. Confidential 99: Bobby Inge was guilty of conspiracy to distribute obscene material, a felony bounce. | |
| Another Day in Paradise 258: Gonna take a big bounce on this one. Three-time loser. | |
| (con. 1964–8) Cold Six Thousand 514: I don’t want bad publicity at the Cavern, you don’t want a manslaughter bounce. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 133: Kidnap’s a gas-chamber bounce. |
(d) (UK Und.) fiddling and dishonest practice (adjusting invoices, stealing stock etc) by retail shop employees.
| Signs of Crime 174: Bounce A word used among dishonest shop employees to describe the system of falsely adjusting invoices, delivery notes and price tags, so as to cover up the theft of stock either by the employees themselves or by accomplices who enter the shop during business hours. |
3. cherry brandy.
| Mass. H.S. Collection VII 247: The usual drink of the fishermen at that period [c1730] was liquor which they called bounce, composed of two thirds spruce beer and one third wine [DA]. | |
| Comic Almanack Dec. 114: A teacupful of cherry bounce at Vidow Smith’s. |
4. (US) a trip, a journey.
| Snares of N.Y. 81: Take a bounce on the Hudson road to Spuyten Duyvil Creek [HDAS]. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 7: He’s a stat rape-o and psycho snout diver [...] Kidnap was a gas chamber bounce. |
5. (US) constr. with the, ejection, esp. from a saloon or bar; dismissal from a jobget the bounce
| St Louis Globe-Democrat 19 Jan. n.p.: [This] impels his friend to say, ‘Did you get the grand bounce?’. | |
| Detroit Free Press in (1909) 147/1: Experience has shown that iron steamships are very dangerous in case of collisions, so the only plan now to increase ocean travel will be to build vessels entirely of india-rubber. A collision between vessels would hardly do more than give the passengers the grand bounce. | |
| Mexico Missouri (MO) 21 Nov. 2/1: Give the ornery whisky-guzzlers and loafers the grand bounce. | |
| Fact’ry ’Ands 119: Pee give him er bounce off ther land. | |
| Rolling Stones 122: Have you ever thought [...] of giving her the bounce yourself? [DA]. | |
| Sun (Kalgoorlie, WA) 27 July 8/5: [US speaker] ‘He and his mates were “canned,” “fired” or had received the ”grand bounce”’. | |
| Day Book (Chicago) 23 Sept. 8/2: It is [...] almost a certainty that Charley kellerman and Old Doc Taylor, election commissioners, are going to get the grand bounce. | |
| Journal of Applied Psychology 258: They gave me the grand bounce [W&F]. | |
| Bessie Cotter 176: Maybe I’d better give him the bounce. | |
| Chicago Sun 20 May 15/1: He was given the bounce by the Umpire [DA]. | |
| letter 18 Sept. in Proud Highway (1997) 541: A bounce will put me in a terrible hole. |
6. (also bouncy-bouncy) an act of sexual intercourse.
| Campus Tramp 108: Don didn’t want her, not at all, not even for one last bounce in a bed. | |
| , | | DAS. |
| Lex. of Cadet Lang. 55: usage: ‘How about coming with me for a bounce?’. | |
| Guardian G2 23 Aug. 8: God, what a fuss you lot make about a little bouncy-bouncy. | |
| Empty Wigs (t/s) 259: [W]hite people [...] pay nice wad for pipe and bounce . |
In phrases
(Aus.) to threaten, to intimidate, to suggest blackmail; thus common bounce(r), a man who uses a boy to claim that he has been abused so as to threaten a homosexual with a charge of ‘unnatural intercourse’.
| Digger Dialects 13: — [...] ‘to come on the bounce’ — make an arrogant demand. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Southern Cross (Adelaide) 24 May. 11/2: Some of you jokers will come the ounce [sic] about this. But that’s all right about you. We’re not taking any back slack, and if you don’t break it down we’ll wipe you off and go you scone hot. | |
| Capricornia (1939) 371: You don’t come the blunny bounce on me. | |
| Black Cargo 188: He come the bounce, I tell you. And I bounced him. He got snotty about a job I done. | |
| Tell Morning This 214: He didn’t like [...] anyone ‘to come the bounce over him’. | |
| Sunshine of Your Smile She’d come on the bounce, angry that her daughter’s life [...] had been threatened with trouble. |
(UK Und.) the act of blackmailing a homosexual, a scheme carried out by a thug who, allied with a male street prostitute, entraps homosexual men.
| Leaves from a Prison Diary I 132: The Common Bounce — [...] they train young lads, generally thieves whom they are bringing out, to follow such men [...] as they believe to be ‘game,’ and endeavour to entice them to some out-of-the-way place where the scoundrel who is watching pounces upon the victim, and, under a threat of giving him into custody upon the most abominable of all charges, obtains a sum of money. |
to be thrown out, both of a place or one’s employment, or to be jilted.
| Grip 12-16 75: I must get my copy in pretty soon or I’ll get the bounce. | |
| Some Funny Things 54: They pulled me out and told me to leave town or I’d get the bounce. | |
| San Antonio Light (TX) 16 July 4/2: He will make him a liberal loan [...] should he get the ‘bounce’ for his little slip. | |
| Tramp Diary in Jack London On the Road (1979) 58: Falling asleep in the chairs at the Hotel & getting the bounce. | |
| Chimmie Fadden 7: Say, if I didn’t come near getting de grand bounce, de straight turn out, me name’s not Chimmie Fadden. | |
| ‘Local Color’ Complete Short Stories (1993) I 690: The anaemic Cerberus grinned when I took the elevator. ‘Get the bounce, eh?’. | |
| L.A. Herald 18 Aug. 29/1: Find him, or every man of you will get the bounce. | |
| Eve. Star (Washington, DC) 27 Apr. 69/3: Ever teacher understands that if he can’t keep the kids interested [...] she’s liable to get the bounce. | |
| Dict. Amer. Sl. 8: bounce, get the. To be discharged from a job. | |
| Jack-Roller 84: I worked with girls and we joked and fooled around too much, so at the end of the first week I got the ‘bounce’. | |
| Honest Rainmaker (1991) 149: The dread of getting the bounce Saturday night holds many a worker to his place. |
1. to send away, dismiss from a job.
| in Annual Report (Office of Attorney-General, KS) 152: And said Stanley to Lappin, / ‘If we catch him a nappin’, / ’e’ll give the “grand bounce” to Jake Orcutt’. | |
| Manchester Courier 7 Aug. 14/4: I feels their noses [...] If it is cold my experienced hand can tell [...] and I gives ’em the grand bounce. | |
| Bill Nye and Boomerang 86: Keno-El-Pharo received the Oriental grand bounce from the inn-keeper. [Ibid.] 192: On yester morn I did give him the grand bounce. | |
| Forty Liars (1888) 31: The old man’ll give you a time check and the Oriental Grand Bounce. You hear the mellow trill of my bazoo? | |
| Best things from Best Authors 151: He found himself confronted by four or five bootblacks, who looked as if they had planned to give him the bounce. | |
| Torchy 39: Say, Piddie [...] if you don’t think you’ll sleep easy to-night unless you give some one the bounce, why not fire me? | |
| Logan Repub. (UT) 23 Mar. 2/2: If Mr Wilson just had Mr Bryan in the cabinet now he would not ‘knock him into a cocked hat,’ he would just give him the Lansing bounce. | |
| ‘Fist and Fang’ Fight Stories May 🌐 He lost two more fights in a row that way. Hussenstein give him the bounce and he dropped out of view. |
2. to jilt.
| Life (NY) 10 Nov. n.p.: [cartoon caption] I could forgive her giving me the bounce, if she hadn’t done it for a fellow with legs like that; that’s where it hurts me! | |
| ‘Champ of the Forecastle’ Fight Stories Nov. 🌐 If she gives Sven the bounce for beatin’ up Olaf, whyn’t she give Olaf the bounce long ago for beatin’ up Sven so much? | |
| My Friend Judas (1963) 37: She’d given him the bounce. |
to default on a payment.
| How to Live in London 32: This trick, from the gentlemanly exterior of those who practise it, seldom fails; but if it does, they ‘go on the bounce,’ that is, boldly declare they have no money, and do not mean to pay. | |
| Hodgson’s Nat. Songster n.p.: To live on the bounce, why he did very well, / Dando, the bouncing, seedy swe;;. |
(US) death.
| Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 147/1: Great bounce (Am., 1883). Death. Everyday Americans, disgusted possibly with the sentimental fashion of describing death for some years [...] invented several grotesque paraphrases of death [...] This was one of the attempts. |
1. on the spur of the moment, spontaneously.
| Sporting Times 29 June n.p.: Several well known defaulters would be observed going to and fro on the bounce [F&H]. | |
| Penny Showman 12: We must get a Lolly Pop (shop) on the Bounce, for a Saturday night. | |
| (con. WWI) Soldier and Sailor Words 34: Bounce, On The: On the spur of the moment. At the critical moment. | |
| Ship Inspector 2: When I was at university I would sometimes go on the bounce and catch a bus or a train somewhere. | |
| Outlaws (ms.) 78: Obviously I’m on my Jack, I’m not here on the bounce. | |
| Kill Your Friends (2009) 14: Schneider has signed one too many turkeys on the bounce and his position [...] is increasingly shaky. |
2. for free.
| Eve. News (Sydney) 3 July 11/4: [of UK] ‘I am told,’ said a plaintiff in the Southwark County Court, ‘that the man (referring to the defendant) is nothing more than a duck-shover - a man who gets things on the ‘bounce’ and the ‘nod.’. |
3. consecutively, in a row.
| Ten Storey Love Song 189: [H]aving not eaten five or six days on the bounce. |
(Aus.) to threaten, to intimidate.
| Shiralee 58: Coming at me with a bottle. Putting the bounce into me. | |
| Intractable [ebook] A short, stocky screw started to put the bounce on. ‘Think you’re tough, Matthews? [...] ‘Want to take me on, tough guy?’. |