potato n.
1. constr. with the, the right thing, the apposite thing; usu. as quite the potato; thus negative, not quite the potato.
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Noctes Ambrosianae May 175: Upon my honor, that's a most natty surtout—and your spatterdashes, why they are quite the potato. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | London Lit. Gaz. 19 Jan. 35/2: Ravishing thy Russian ice; and thy new ‘Souffle’ quite the potato. | |
| (con. 1737–9) Jack Sheppard (1917) xxxvi: Larry is quite ‘the potato’. |
2. a person, often as an insult with a negative adj.
![[Ind]](/static/img/flags/ind.png "India") | Bombay Gaz. 5 Feb. 13/3: '[He] cried to them. ‘Damn you! take off your hats, you Potatoes!’ the slang word for stupid fools . | |
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Flash (NY) 23 June n.p.: The men [i.e. boxers] peeled in the street and a pretty pair of potatoes they are. | |
 | Buffalo Wkly Exp. (NY) 4 May 1/4: ‘He’s a sly sort of potato [...] I wouldn’t trust him’. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Bulletin (Sydney) 22 Oct. 9/3: As a closer of boot-uppers Frawncis Habigle is justly famous, but as a mining Minister he is a remarkably unobtrusive potato indeed. | |
| ‘Liza’ in Budgeree Ballads 85: I’m a clean pertater, Liza. | |
| ‘The Amazing Hat Mystery’ in Young Men in Spats 100: ‘[Y]ou know Elizabeth Bottsworth?’ ‘Intimately,’ said Nelson. ‘Rather a sound young potato, what?’. | |
| Nightmare Alley (1947) 264: Molly, the dumb little potato. | |
| Call Me When the Cross Turns Over (1958) 69: That would be the day, Locky retorted, when some bloody potater [...] had him stringing along with her. | |
| Fields of Fire (1980) 230: That fat potato looked me square in the face and called me a coward! |
3. (also spud) a large hole in a sock or stocking through which the flesh shows [? the shape + the dirt that accrues to the bare flesh].
| implied in tater n. (2) | |
| Eng. Illus. Mag. June 616: ... potatoes, that is, holes in the fleshings perceptible in many places [F&H]. | |
| [perf. Vesta Tilley] Don’t it do your eyesight good! 🎵 [Y]ou find she has potatoes in the heels of both her hose. | |
| Dundee Eve. Exp. 12 Jan. 3: My husband would always walk about with potatoes in his socks [...] the polite name for holes. | |
| South Riding (1988) 110: For goodness’ sake, during break, ask Miss Parsons for some wool and mend that stocking [...] Every time I look up I’m confronted by that terrible potato! | |
| Dly Mirror 24 Jan. 4/4: That ‘potato.’ A soldier must not consider his socks unserviceable until the hole [is] one inch. | |
| Thanks to Jennings (1988) 166: I’ve got a massive great potato in the heel and she said she’d mend it. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Maori Girl 231: She darned the holes in his working socks – spuds, she called them. | |
| DSUE (8th edn) 1135/1: since late C.19. | |
| Aus. Word Map 🌐 spud. Hole worn through a sock. |
4. senses based on the shape.
(a) (US) the head; cite 1892 is fig. use, the mind.
| Illus. Police News 24 Dec. 4/1: ‘I’ve cooked a yarn that will suit old Goggles’ potato to a T’. | |
| in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 65: When Dave Shade hit Jimmy Slattery on the potato at the Italian Hospital Fund fight, he gave the Shade family the biggest boost it ever had. | |
| ‘The Jollity Building’ in Just Enough Liebling (2004) 237: They just stick their potato in every office and say, ‘Anything for me today?’. | |
| Honest Rainmaker (1991) 24: [I] took the boss’s green eyeshade [...] and placed it on my towish potato. |
(b) (US) a bump, a swelling.
| Christ in Concrete 219: Madonn, what a potato I Have! [Ibid.] 257: With a stone I raised a potato on his bull-head. |
5. (also potato chip) a dollar; money; usu. in pl. [on the ‘vegetable’ pattern of cabbage n.2 (3a), kale n., lettuce n.1 etc. although unlike them not green].
| in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 65: An’ the guy charged him five potato chips for the tow. | |
| Cecil Beaton’s N.Y. 25: The guy [...] must have more potatoes in his pocket than most guys who walk along Broadway these days. | |
| Runyon à la Carte 93: The Sky [...] loses all his potatoes betting a guy St. Louis is the biggest town in the world. | |
| On the Waterfront (1964) 262: A steady job. A couple extra potatoes, that’s all I want. | |
| Flesh Peddlers (1964) 198: Nose, he swipes it, see, and changes it to ‘I’ll give you five hundred potatoes for your...’. | |
| Gumshoe (1998) 122: A job. A few potatoes to earn. Like the next guy. | |
| (con. 1949) True Confessions (1979) 94: It wasn’t as if Turd was a Bruno Hauptmann, pulling a kidnap for the potatoes. | |
| Guardian G2 10 Sept. 13: Insuring the cream of British talent is small potatoes. ‘It was about a quarter of a million.’. | |
| Outlaws (ms.) 29: That fact is that drugs is business. Big fucking potatoes. |
6. (Can.) a native of New Brunswick [the province grows many potatoes; the implication is one of rural stolidness and stupidity].
| Maledicta II:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 168: Potato Anyone from New Brunswick, a potato-growing province. Implies stupidity. |
7. (US) a severely disabled person.
| Paradise Alley (1978) 210: A vicious beating could leave you a breathing potato for the rest of your life. |
8. (N.Z. prison) a M?ori skinhead.
| Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 144/1: potato n. 1 a M?ori skinhead. |
9. (N.Z.) anyone, e.g. a Polynesian or a M?ori , who is regarded as being ‘brown on the outside but white on the inside’.
| Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 144/1: potato n. 2 a M?ori prison officer who has internalised aspects of the P?keh? system. | |
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 163: potato A Polynesian, brown on the outside, white within. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
(Anglo-Irish) the stomach.
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Real Life in Ireland 54: You stood a prime chance of having a soldier’s bayonet passed through your potatoe bag. |
the mouth.
| Era (London) 21 Jan. 11/3: Charley made his right tell on Bob’s potato-box, and then letting fly with his right [etc]. |
(US) the mouth.
| Broadway Belle (NY) 1 Jan. n.p.: A rattling salute on Jim’s potato cavity. |
see sense 5 above.
an Irishman.
| Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 80: You bog-trotting potato-eater. | |
| Bradford Obs. 9 Mar. 5/3: The young potato eater is really boiling with rage, and offering the most frightful menaces. | |
| Operative (London) 7 Apr. 16/1: Letters from London by the Irish Potato Eater. | |
| Royal Cornwall Gaz. 13 Feb. 2/5: How the penniless potato eater is to be by remitting the duties on wheat, he did not explain. | |
| Boston Blade 10 June n.p.: Squads of raw Greeks, just over, with their broods of potato-eaters. | |
| N.Y. Times 14 Feb. 8/3: Relieved of [...] potato rot [...] we can enjoy [potatoes] to our heart’s content [...] without being ranked among ‘Irish potato eaters’. | |
| Our Boys 239: Come, now, my red-headed Irish pratie-machine. | |
| Sut Lovingood’s Yarns 110: That tater-eater hed a hole inter the sittin down part ove his britches. | |
| Sporting Times 1 Mar. 1/5: Ballyhooly’s Rules of Football have proved a great success in Ireland. [...] ‘No, yer honour,’ said the potato consumer. | |
| Star (Renoldsville, PA) 7 June 6/4: Now then, you old potato-eater. | |
| Anaconda Standard (MO) 7 Feb. 3/2: Several of the spud-eaters affirm that green will be sported. | |
| Reveille- New Era (Hill City, KS) 21 Sept. 2/5: Hill City Irish potato eaters are beginning to realize what it means. | |
| Stiffs 227: I make it a bob, you spud-eater. | |
| On the Waterfront (1964) 152: Uh, I’m just a potato eater, but isn’t it as simple as one-two-three? | |
| Clarion-Ledger (Jackson, MS) section II 2 Dec. 3/2: The Irish potato-eater, the longshoreman at Liverpool [etc]. | |
| Fort Apache, The Bronx 138: You scruffy Irish potato eater, what do you know about style? | |
| Maledicta VII 24: The Irish were called potato eater, potato head, and spud. | |
| Godson 311: How did you like that, you potato-eating bastards? | |
| Dict. of Invective (1991) 229: potato eater, an Irishman. | |
| ‘Orpheus Descending’ Oz ser. 4 ep. 14 [TV script] That’s all we need in this place: another spud-eating mick. | |
![[Can]](/static/img/flags/can.png "Canada") | Gazette (Montreal) 7 July W8/3: The poorer Irish, the spud eaters, were said to be larger, healthier [...] than other Europeans. | |
| L.A. Times 1 Dec. E10/2: ‘I’ll dance on your grave, you Irish potato-eater!’. |
(US) a mild term of abuse; thus potato-faced adj.
| Brave Irishman I i: Add to this [...] a Cumberland pinch to his hat, an old red coat, and a damn’d potatoe-face. | |
| London Standard 14 Dec. 3/1: The four magistrates were Dean Mahon [...] and potato-faced M’Donough. | |
| Sligo Champion 11 Mar. 1/3: Paddy Lambert, a thumping, potato-faced Irishman. | |
| Oddities of London Life I 152: A regular potato-faced Irish witch came forward. | |
| Jack Ashore I 294: The artfulness of her tater-faced dump of a daughter. | |
| Pickings from N.O. Picayune (1847) 20: The other was a dumpy, potato-faced Irishman. | |
| Revelations of Ireland 115: Why, you potato-faced pippin-sneezer. | |
| Glasgow Herald 7 Apr. 3/6: A long potato-faced Milesian is bawling out the contents of the ‘sensation song book’. | |
| Eve. Teleg. (Dundee) 17 Mar. 2/2: This ghostly adviser is a potato-faced jovial irishman. | |
| Hartford Herald (KY) 21 June 2/2: A number of potato-faced specimens made spectacles of themselves. | |
| S.F. Call 17 Oct. 2/2: The candidate referred to the non-union employers [...] as ‘piping, sneezing, potato faced [...] cowardly curs’. | |
| Derby Dly Teleg. 29 Jan. 4/5: ‘Now then,’ shrieked Mrs Elias P. Hutchings, ‘Miss Smith, you fix on to that potato-faced one!’. | |
| Gold in the Streets (1966) 139: What the hell’s he’s always got to be pushing his big spud face into other people’s business. | |
| Christine 166: Off my case, potato-face. |
1. the penis.
| Troilus and Cressida V ii: How the devil Luxury, with his fat rump and potato-finger, tickles these together! | |
| Loyal Subject II ii: ‘How fit ’tis [i.e. a ring] for my finger.’ [...] ‘No doubt you’l find too A finger fit for you.’. | |
| Northern Lasse IV iv: I doubt your middle finger is too short, Mr. Widgine. | |
| ‘Sentimental Sprig’ Records of the [...] Beggar’s Benison 76: The middle finger’s favourite ring, That friction sets on fire. | |
| Jane’s Bad Hare Day 81: Ask him why he sticks his potato finger down the drain. Ask him if it’s prost. (The entire family, uncles, aunts, cuz, all have this urethral phobia.). |
2. a dildo.
| Queens’ Vernacular. |
a clumsy person.
| Maledicta IX 57: Irishman, potato-fingered n Clumsy person; from the alleged predilection of the Irish for potatoes and the stereotype of their awkwardness. |
(US) an Irishman.
| Hard Bounce [ebook] ‘You ignorant little potato-fucker’. |
(US) a finger, a hand.
| Wkly Clarion (Jackson, MS) 3 Aug. 3/4: Merriman run his potato-grabbers around his windpipe and treated him to a good choking. | |
| Wkly Democratic Statesman (Austin, TX) 12 Oct. 1/6: A soldier who had shaken hands with the grandfather [...] stretched out his [...] potato grabber to the grandson. | |
| Clarkesville Wkly Chron. (TN) 16 Oct. 1/3: Slim Jim’s potato grabbers. | |
| Sedalia Wkly Bazoo (MO) 29 Dec. 5/1: The dysapeptics are today walking around with [...] their right potato grabber on that part of their anatomy. |
(US) the hand.
| ‘M’Cracken’s Experience’ in Polly Peablossom’s Wedding 60: I’d jest doubled up these pertater grablers, calculatin’ to plant one of ’em on the tip of his nose. |
see separate entry.
(US) illicit liquor distilled from potatoes.
| News-Jrnl (Mansfield, OH) 27 June 2/2: A posse [...] confiscated five gallons of potato jack whiskey and 40 gallons of mash. | |
| News-Jrnl (Mansfield, OH) 3 July 14/3: Home brew, potato jack and the other jacks may be all right for Saturday nighters and week-end parties [etc]. | |
| Cogan’s Trade (1975) 169: He won’t get enough potato jack in the can to kill himself. | |
| ‘Gambit Reflex’ on John Rummel’s homepage 🌐 I don’t remember what happened next, what with oxygen loss and that rotgut potato jack and all, but I clearly remember waking up in Med Station 3. | |
| Smoke King n.p.: The corporal was feeling confused suddenly, as if the potato jack he'd been drinking earlier had returned to disable him. |
the mouth.
| Diary (1891) III 333: Hold you your potato-jaw, my dear. | |
| Manchester Times 26 Nov. 4/3: ‘Hold you your potato-jaw, my dear,’ cried the Duke. |
a drum stick.
| Other Side of the Circus 236: Well, there’s the big drumstick. It’s a potato masher or walloper. |
an Irishman.
| Twitter 24 Jan. 🌐 tweet to @MrPaulDuane DONT TELL ME WHAT IS AND ISNT A DECENT ARGUMENT YOU FILTHY POTATO NIGGER. |
1. (US black) used as an insult, lit. anyone employed in a menial job.
| N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 17 Oct. 10: Now, if the potato peelers from the 372nd are taking any of the property [i.e. young women] that belongs to the 369th, I would like to remind them [etc]. |
2. see potato (peeler) n.
(prizefighting) the kidneys.
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 6 May 949/2: [A] heavy blow on C.'s potatoe shed, or kidneys, laid him on his mother earth. |
(UK und.) scraps of silver.
| Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 8: Potato slices: Silver scrap metal. |
(NZ/US gay) an East Asian or Maori gay man who prefers Western partners.
| Gay (S)language. | |
| Queer Sl. in the Gay 90s 🌐 Potato Queen – (Asian) guys preferring white men. | |
![[SA]](/static/img/flags/sa.png "South Africa") | Gayle 89/1: potato queen n. man who likes sex only with white men [American Gayspeak with limited usage in South Africa]. | |
| Rice Queen Spy 194: Now I laugh when I hear I am called a rice queen, and someone else is a potato queen because he likes whites. | |
| ‘Trolling the Beat to Working the Soob’ in Int’l Jrnl Lexicog. 23:1 65: Queen is often preceded by a noun or adjective that indicates a place of residence, character or preference. Indicative of this are terms like [...] potato queen (a man who prefers sex with European men). | |
| (con. early 1960s) in N.Y. Rev. Bks 25 Oct. 🌐 I would in effect teach them how to camp—[...] how to label a guy who likes blacks (‘a dinge queen’) or Asians (‘a rice queen’). |
(US) a hand.
| Georgia Scenes (1848) 118: Let your Uncle Johnny put his potato stealer (hand) into that hat, and tickle the chins of them are shiners a little! | |
| Wilmington Jrnl (MC) 6 Aug. 1/3: Johnny put his potato stealer (hand) into that hat. | |
| Dly Phoenix (Columbia, SC) 16 June 2/2: He raised his hand in an imploring attitude [...] and one of them fired his pistol at the palm of the upraised potato stealer. |
the mouth (cf. tater-trap under tater n.).
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Don’t flash your ivory but shut your potatoe trap and give your guts a holiday, i.e. be silent. | |
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue ms. additions n.p.: [as cite 1785] [...] Irish Wit. Thus expressed in England, Shut your mouth keep your guts warm, the Devil loves hot Tripes. | |
| Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd edn) n.p.: Shut your potatoe trap and give your tongue a holiday; i.e. be silent. | |
| Dict. Sl. and Cant. | |
| Lex. Balatronicum [as cit. 1796]. | |
| Salisbury & Winchester Jrnl 8 June 3: This here girl opened her potato trap upon me. | |
| Man o’ War’s Man (1843) 37: Clap a stopper on that vile potato-trap o’ yours. | |
| Tom and Jerry; A Musical Extravaganza II iv: Bad luck to de ha’porth passed my pratee-trap dis blessed night. | |
| Pierce Egan’s Life in London 12 June 157/2: Cullen let fly his right daddle at Neale’s potato basket. | |
| Jorrocks Jaunts (1874) 13: ‘Hold your jaw, Mr. J——,’ cries Tom, ‘you are always throwing that red rag of yours. I wish you would keep your potato-trap shut’. | |
| Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 22 Jan. n.p.: [The blow] brought claret on the sinsiter corner of his potatoe-trap. | |
| Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 3 Sept. n.p.: He hit out and met Billy on the ’tato trap. | |
| Handley Cross (1854) 13: Shut up your potato trap! I see how it is. | |
| Sam Slick in England II 7: Jist take my advice, and mind your potatoe-trap, or you will be in trouble. | |
| Tipperary Free Press 29 June 2/6: Shut your pratie trap, you ignoramus. | |
| Hillingdon Hall III 149: I’ll bring the ball into the Court of Exchequer, and let Baron Halderson have a look in his turnip trap. | |
| Bell’s Life in Sydney 27 Sept. 3/1: Getting clear, the native caught York slightly on the potatoe trap. | |
| Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 6 Apr. n.p.: He opens his potato trap, / And down his throat it goes. | |
| Adventures of Mr Verdant Green (1982) II 166: While to another he would mention as an interesting item of news [...] ‘That’ll damage your potato-trap!’. | |
| (con. 1811) Fights for the Championship 47: The carmine distilled freely from his potatoe trap. | |
| Life in Boston & N.Y. (Boston, MA) 22 Nov. n.p.: You had better keep that potatoe trap of yours shut. | |
| Bell’s Life in Victoria (Melbourne) 6 June 3/6: Thomas [...] caught Joe a fair straight-un on the potato trap, asking, ‘Is that hard enough, Joe?’ Not receiving a satisfactory answer, he followed by saying, ‘Then I'll try another’. | |
| Chambers’s Journal xiii, 348: His mouth is his ‘potatoe trap’ – more shortly, ‘tatur trap’ – or kisser [F&H]. | |
| Sydney Morn. Herald 21 June 10/5: Hard drinking, and ignoble slang, constitute the entertainment. [...] It is know-ng to have a bet on the next fight, and to talk about a man's ‘peepers,’ and ‘potato-trap’. | |
| Night Side of N.Y. 80: His nose is a ‘conk,’ his chest a ‘bread-basket,’ his mouth a ‘potato-trap’. | |
| Belfast News Letter 4 Oct. 3/3: Shut up that ‘pratie’ trap there, and let us hear the speaker. | |
| Sl. Dict. | |
| Carlson Advocate (Lehighton, PA) 12 Sept. 4/1: He [...] ordered the old man to open his potato trap. | |
| Salt lake Herald (UT) 5 June 7/2: Garside [...] landed a few mosquito killers on Pierce’s bread basket and potato trap. | |
| Out Back 237: ‘Lay yure hid back,’ says he, ‘and open yure potatee trap.’. | |
| Vanguard Library 31 Mar. 1: Shouldn’t fill your potato-trap so full. | |
| Sport (Adelaide) 21 Aug. 5/3: Winnie J. says she was born with a silver spoon in her mouth [...] that accounts for the size of her potato trap . | |
| letter 26 May in Holmes-Pollock Letters I (1961) 14: With which I close my potato-trap — for speech — to open it again to take in luncheon. | |
| DN V 238: potato trap, n. phr. Mouth. ‘Shut your potato trap’. | |
| Slanguage. |
In phrases
(N.Z.) to be ruined.
| Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. |
US an insignifcant person.
| Whip & Satirist of NY & Brooklyn (NY) 12 Mar. n.p.: Mr. — [...] will please remember that he is but a small potatoe, darned few in a hillock. | |
| Broadway Belle (NY) 8 Jan. n.p.: We do not think that the fellow’s farm can produce a smaller potato than himelf. | |
| And When She Was Bad 98: Deane was succeeded in the hot seat by a very small pot from the State Department. |
(US teen) an attractive female.
| Chicago Trib. Graphic Section 26 Dec. 7/1: Jive Talk [...] Smooth Girl Slick chick. Sweet stuff. Wolf bait. Queen of hearts. P-38. Able Grable. A good deal. A doll. Smooth potato. Hot gingerbread. Pretty pigeon. 20-20 little squab. |
see under sweet adj.1