slush n.1
1. worthless information.
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Lantern (New Orleans) 8 Sept. 4: To publish the rubbish and slush daily wired here as news. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Dead Bird (Sydney) 10 Aug. 1/4: ‘What sort of slush is this?’ asked the old bird [i.e. the editor] of the Rooster. | |
| Boy’s Own Paper 29 Oct. 73: To think that [...] a boy should care to wallow in such deleterious slush as this! | |
| Sun. Times (Perth) 31 Jan. 4/5: What drivelling slush ‘Felix Horan, the one-time prominent cricketer, is allowed to inflict on readers of the Australasian. | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Chicago Trib. 21 Aug. 16/7: The comment of the New York Sun, in one of it’s meanest headlines [...] ‘Gosh! What Slush!’. |
2. (orig. US, also slushiness) blatant sentimentality; also attrib.
| Innocents Abroad 91: He’ll go down now and grind out about four reams of the awfullest slush. | |
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 10 June 3/2: Abbey has even allowed that crazy loon, Sydney Rosenfeld, to sling his slush on the Park Theatre stage In the form of ‘Florlnel’. | |
| (con. c.1840) Huckleberry Finn 213: All that kind of rot and slush, till it was just sickening. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 29 Oct. 6/1: Consul Griffin, fortunately, was unable to appear, or things would have been worse than they were, but he wrote the following pyramidal slush in order to keep up his character: [...]. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 17 Mar. 1/7: A few slush-and-slobber songs of the drorin’ room school [...] are the highest flights yet reached in musical composition by female genius. | |
| Tales of the Ex-Tanks 87: Me old boy hood home, down on the farm [...] Who wants to listen to a lot o’ slush like that? | |
| ‘Sing a Song o’ Shipwreck’ in Salt-Water Ballads 10: ’N’ he falls to singin’ some slush about clinkin’ a can. | |
| You Can Search Me 50: There are only four people in New York city who can write criticisms – the rest of the bunch are slush-dealers. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Truth (Wellington) 11 Jan. 5/6: The ‘slush’ is provided by beery and amateur cockney ink-slingers. | |
![[Can]](/static/img/flags/can.png "Canada") | Under Groove 6: ‘Aw, slush!’ said Dinney, in disgust. | |
| Landloper 32: You’re one of these college dudes out on the road getting stuff to write into a book [...] you’re putting slush all over the profesh. Quit it and go back to college. | |
| letter 9 July in Paige (1971) 181: And a general distaste for the slushiness and swishiness of the post-Swinburnian British line. | |
| Final Count 773: To make the world safe for heroes to live in, with further slush ad nauseam. | |
| letter 6 Oct. in Paige (1971) 236: IF you think there is a local faction that wants or insists on a representative of vagueness and slush and glad-handing, I suppose vice-presidencies were invented for conciliating such. | |
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Cold Stone Jug (1981) II 134: He wrote all that, in his note, and a whole lot of slush besides. | |
 | Tender is Night 51: I mean, would I have been the sort of girl you might have – oh, slush, you know what I mean. | |
| My Friend Judas (1963) 35: I’m all for doing things. None of this slush. | |
| Where the Boys Are 201: You guys can have that slush. | |
| Hazell Plays Solomon (1976) 7: She didn’t look the type to go in for baby slush. | |
| Decadence in Decadence and Other Plays (1985) 26: All you’ve got is slush and sentiment. | |
| Guardian Rev. 14 Aug. 11: ‘Romantic fiction’ need be neither toe-curling pornographic, nor mindless slush. | |
| Powder 146: ‘I’m missing you. I . . . ’ ‘Fuck that, slush queen!’. | |
| Hooky Gear 55: Same breath I cant stop the slush comin up as I think of all the entertainment we had. |
3. in context of potable liquids.
(a) (UK tramp) the tea or coffee available in lodging houses.
| Paved with Gold 252: If you’re fond of slush you may ‘suck’ it without any danger of being ‘hocussed’. | |
| Bar-20 xi: I’ll flavor his slush [...] with year-old dish-rags! | |
| Gun in My Hand 37: Bun and slush in the caf. |
(b) (US) beer.
| Cincinnati Enquirer 7 Sept. 10/7: Slush and German Decoction--Greet the ears of our Teutonic saloon-keepers when any of the ‘profesh’ call for beer. | |
| Guthrie Dly Leader 28 Mar. 2/4: The big burly coons [...] repaired to McCord’s slush stand and drank copious drauhts of gullet-birning belly-wash. | |
| W. Aus. Sun. Times (Perth) 12 Feb. 8/3: [heading] The kind of Slush We Imbibe. Hogwash we may occasionally drink. |
(c) any form of sloppy food, e.g. a thin stew.
| Shorty McCabe 236: ‘It’s the last time you get any of that slush into me, Babbitt,’ says he. | |
| Prison Memoirs of an Anarchist (1926) 261: The hand-out was a damn sight better’n th’ rotten slush I get here. | |
| Shearer’s Colt 139: What time do they carry round the slush — tea and bovril and that — on this hooker? |
(d) (US campus) a heavy drinker [slush up ].
| Cumberland Pacquet 12 Dec. 4/5: His better half, all fire and tow, / Call’d him a slush — his comrades raff — / Swore that he could a brewing stow, / And aftert that sipe all the draff. | |
| Campus Sl. Sept. 6: slush – habitual drinker: That slush has another beer in her hand. |
4. (UK Und.) forged, counterfeit money; also attrib.
| Squeaker (1950) 153: ‘Slush. Don’t let’s have any argument.’ Walters replaced the forged note. | |
| Enter the Saint 14: Have you got a printing press or do you make it [i.e. £300] by hand? I didn’t know you were in the ‘slush’ game, Snake. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). | |
| ‘The Almighty Dollar’ in Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 150: Apparently he still had some of the ‘slush’ left. | |
| Crust on its Uppers 47: There’s hundreds of things you’ve got to check with slush. Paper, serials, what sort of plates they used. | |
| Lowspeak. |
5. see slushy n.
In derivatives
(US Und.) drunk.
| Sun (NY) 9 Apr. 10/7: [List provided by a doctor in the alcoholic ward at Bellevue — terms from ambulance drivers] [...] ginny, google-eyed, lushy, off one’s trolley, slushed. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |
In compounds
an ill-mannered eater; one who eats much greasy food; cite 1913 refs a ‘Hindoo’.
| , , | | Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. |
| Lex. Balatronicum. | |
| Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue. | |
| Andrew Jackson 71: He was a rale slush-bucket, who never used his teeth upon any thing softer than shel-barks. | |
| Hillingdon Hall II 113: Get Mr. Slush- bucket to meet him — he is a regular two bottle man. | |
| Sut Lovingood’s Yarns 251: Yu hary, sulky, choliky durn’d son ove a slush-tub. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 23 Mar. 11/6: He were fat, and not too bad; / Anyway, he didn’t oughter / By a slush tub, to be had. |
a coffee-house.
| Flash Mirror 20: T. Potts has opened a rummy slush ken at the sign of the Grouts and Coffee-holder, commonly called the Saloopian Hot-Hell, where he sarves [sic] out, out and out Pekoe soup, Congou broth and brown paint. |
of things or individuals, the average, the run-of-the-mill.
| Scene (1996) 125: He had to make [arrests], had to fight above the slush pile. |
1. (US) a trombone.
| Dly News (NY) 3 Nov. 31C/1: Slush pump — trombone. | |
| Barefoot Boy with Cheek 90: Awful fine slush pump [...] you ought to dig that. | |
| Book of Jazz 79: The trombone [...] contrary to popular belief as propagated by the movies, is never known among musicians by such terms as ‘slushpump’ and ‘sliphorn,’ but is frequently known simply as a ‘bone’. | |
| , | | DAS. |
| Lex. Black Eng. 69: That kind of pejoration has obviously taken place with terms like licorice stick ‘clarinet’ and slush pump ‘trombone’. | |
| (con. 1940s–60s) Straight from the Fridge Dad. | |
| Indep. Rev. 25 Feb. 14: With Mandelson on his slush-pump / And Norris with his horn. |
2. (Aus.) a second-rate individual.
| ‘I’m Pulling for Ya, Pee Wee’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] I’m a pinhead, we’re all slushpumps [...] Bleah, bleah, bleah! What did I do wrong? |
In phrases
(US Und.) to drink.
| Life In Sing Sing 257: Slush Up. Have a drink. | |
| Keys to Crookdom 417: Slush up – To drink. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |