track n.2
1. the highway or street as the home of tramps, prostitutes, pickpockets etc.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Down the Line 36: I’ll back these three boys to dream longer than any other drummers on the track. | |
| Actors’ Boarding House (1906) 211: I knew plenty of men at the track, along Broadway or among the grafters, who would be glad to lend Duke Merrill, topliner among the ‘con’ men. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Sport (Adelaide) 15 Nov. 7/2: The renowned local ‘Blue Spec,’ who has been doing splendid track work in the city, returned on Saturday. She is reported to be [...] a ‘dead cert’ for the Streetwalker’s Stakes. | |
| Pimp 83: Bitch, the track closes at two. | |
| Street Players 9: If it wasn’t for them bitches Earl got out on the track, he couldn’t borrow five dollars. |
2. (Aus.) any outback road; also attrib.
| Bushranger’s Sweetheart 137: I don’t think a regular sundowner would have easy lines on this track. | |
| ‘The Road to Gundagai’ in Rio Grande’s Last Race (1904) 78: Then slowly, looking coyly back, / She went along the Sydney track. | |
| (?) ‘The Green Lady’ in Roderick (1972) 897: They sung ‘For He’s a Jolly Good feller’ as we took the track. | |
| Battlers 17: His track name was Duke, and he had been ‘busking’ — singing his way from town to town. | |
| I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 241/1: track – any road in the bush or outback. | |
| I’m a Jack, All Right 56: The only tree within a bull’s roar of the track for five miles. | |
| Scrublands [ebook] ‘There’s an army vet and his sheila down the track’ . |
3. (US black) a dancehall, a ballroom, esp. the Savoy Ballroom in Harlem.
| ‘Jiver’s Bible’ in Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive. | |
 | I’ve Been Around NY 12 Jan. [synd. col.] The Savoy Ballroom, popularly known as The Track, is Harlem’s claim to fame. | |
| Really the Blues 216: Pick you up at The Track when the kitchen mechanics romp. | |
| Hear Me Talking to Ya 194: When they opened at the ‘track’ they were just a band without any particular leader. | |
| , | | DAS. |
| ‘The Kinetic Element in Black Idiom’ in Kochman Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out 163: The place where the movement can occur is appropriately termed the ‘track,’ whether the place is a dance hall […]. |
4. (US black) the world of pimping, hustling, confidence tricks etc; the Eastern cities are the fast track, California and the West are the slow track or soft track.
| Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 102: Putting down her broom on the main track in the Big Red with the Long Green Stem. | |
| ‘The Kinetic Element in Black Idiom’ in Kochman Rappin’ and Stylin’ Out 163: The place where the movement can occur is appropriately termed the ‘track,’ whether the place is a dance hall [...], the street. |
5. (US black) that area of a street where a prostitute works.
| ‘The Fall’ in et al. Life (1976) 87: ’Cause my money’s low, and I need me a whore / Who can run that speedy track. | |
| Airtight Willie and Me 76: The track was lousy slow all night. | |
| ‘The Game Belongs To Me’ 🎵 Bitch ain’t gotta hit the track, ain’t gotta give no tricks no head. |
6. (N.Z. prison) a criminal record.
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 192/2: track n. 1 a criminal record. |
In compounds
(Aus.) an itinerant.
| Battlers 17: The track men come in to have their cards stamped at the police station and get their rations to carry them to the next ‘dole town.’. | |
| Sydney and the Bush i: ‘Track dolies’ — swaggies or baggies, who had given up their homes to go on the road — were compelled to keep moving to collect their rations [AND]. |
(US) one who throws themselves in front of a railway or subway train.
| Salt Lake Trib. (UT) 21 Mar. H7/5: The train stops nearly every mile [...] to chase away some shepherd’s flock, preventing track pizza resulting from goats, sheep [etc]. | |
| Tunnel Visions 83: The Control Room [...] knew there was a one-under; what I heard called in New York a track pizza. | |
| ‘London Underground Guide’ at victorian.fortunecity.com 🌐 He learns why green grapes, are more deadly than banana skins, though not as lethal as suicidal ‘one-unders’ (or ‘track pizza’, to use a ‘lovely’ piece of New York Slang). | |
| in New Yorker 79 174: I should have been a railroad-track pizza , a double Indian pepperoni with extra cheese. Sick and scared, I leaned over and puked whiskey. | |
| Blessings 136: ‘You should hear what they call them in New York...track pizza. Get it? Because of all the blood...track pizza...bloody hell’. |
1. in fig. use.
| Inter Ocean (Chicago) 13 May 33/3: After 30 there is a red lantern on love’s track, and at 35 it is track thirteen an’ a washout. |
2. (US Und.) a life sentence.
| ‘The Lang. of Crooks’ in Wash. Post 20 June 4/2: [paraphrasing J. Sullivan] Track No. 13 and a washout, a term strong in the West, is a life sentence. | |
| ‘Criminal Sl.’ in Amer. Law Rev. LII (1918) 891: ‘Track 13’ and ‘washout’ is a life sentence in a Western pentitentiary. | |
| Pittsburgh Sun-Teleg. (PA) 14 July 58/3: With somewhat more than a hundred thousand dollars’ worth of potential dynamite in his pocket to blow him back to a cell for ‘track thirteen and a washout’. | |
| Criminal Sl. (rev. edn). |
In phrases
(being) experienced, usu. spec. sexually experienced; if used of a woman (the usu. form) derog.
| Redneck Mothers 13: The New Belle is a bit older, then, than the average coed; she’s been around the track a time or two (though the mileage doesn’t show). | |
| Zurich Numbers 44: Listen, she’s been around the track. We’re not talking about high school. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Guardian 11 Nov. 🌐 Labour will choose from a trio of middle-aged professional politicians who have all been around the track a fair while. | |
| ‘Naughty College School Girls 7’ Rev. on Excalibur Films 🌐 The cast here are all attractive fresh faces including Vanda (a cutie) edgy Capri, hard-driving Keki and Caroline (our foreign fucker). Only Felecia, who looks like she’s been around the track, doesn’t quite fit. | |
| Highly Effective Detective 67: You’ve lived a lot longer than I have and been around the track a few more times. |
1. experienced.
| Muscle for the Wing 82: She was ten years or so further down the track than Wanda. |
2. referring to the passage of time.
| About Face (1991) 38: He said there’d be another stripe in it for me somewhere down the track. | |
| Candy 157: A few months down the track, we’d do it all again, try and stop. | |
| Kill Shot [ebook] Not that she cared, but it might come in useful down the track. |
(US) to abandon one’s duties, to depart from an expected course of action.
| Congressional Globe 4 Feb. 322/2: I had been accused of flying the track on the creed of the Democratic party [DA]. | |
| ‘Losing Game of Poker’ in Polly Peablossom’s Wedding 47: That derned fool flew the track after I got a good hand. | |
| Black Man of the South 390L: Lizzy made a third trial for a husband with whom she managed to ‘jog along’ in the matrimonial course, until this her last lover ‘flew the track,’ and again was she left comfortless. | |
| More Fables in Sl. [title] The Fable of Why Sweetie Flew the Track. | |
| Eve’s Husband 85: No man ever gets too old to fly the track in some way [DA]. |
the search for food.
| Shorty McCabe 7: I’m generally on the move, but it’s just along the grub track, and that ain’t excitin’. |
behaving badly, making mistakes, being inconsistent.
| ‘Negro English’ in Anglia VII 262: To run plum orf de track = to be entirely wrong. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 14 Nov. 13/2: [They] are all off the track in their vaporings anent the uses and uselessnesses of war-bikes against cavalry. | |
| Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in Four Novels (1983) 131: ‘No,’ Ben said. ‘This thing’s off the track some place.’ You can bet it’s off the track some place, I wanted to tell him. | |
| K. Small Time Crooks 21: All right, Marc. I was off the track that time. | |
| Crumple Zone 142: You’re way off track babes. |
the world of the outback, thus used of a person to imply a vagrant’s life.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 28 Mar. 11/3: ‘Now, Dubbo Kate, you shall be let alone if you tell me what has become of Rorty Johnson. We want him for a super and slang!’ This is when they are ‘on the track.’ When they’ve got a clue, they sit in a pub. all day, and gaze attentively up at the wrong house. | |
| ‘Some Day’ in Roderick (1972) 138: I’ve been knocking around for five years, and the last two years constant on the track. | |
| Duke Tritton’s Letter n.p.: And I can come home now after a hard day’s yakka, [...] wade through half a dozen dishes of scran that we used to dream of when we were on the track, then finish up with Uncle Ned and Roll Me In The Gutter. | |
| Timely Tips For New Australians 22: TO BE ‘ON THE TRACK.’ — To be tramping from place to place. | |
| in Australian in Baker (1945) n.p.: In their place is a new vocabulary of the Bush – [...] never-never, outback, backblocks. One is ‘on the track’, ‘on the wallaby.’. | |
| Battlers 9: He was thinking that life ‘on the track’ was not so bad, with good places to camp and ‘cockies’ sheep to knock over.’. | |
| Caddie 255: He told me his plans. He was going on the track* [...] *On the track — Tramping the back country in search of work. | |
| Yarns of Billy Borker 48: Easy to see you weren’t on the track during the Depression. | |
| (con. 1930s) ‘Keep Moving’ 1: ‘New on the track?’ my companion asked. |
(N.Z.) to be dismissed from a job; thus put down the track, to dismiss.
| Maoriland Worker 7 July 14: And a ‘drummer’ is the man with the lowest tally – perhaps because he is likeliest to take and keep the track with his ‘load’ [DNZE]. | |
| Off the Sheep’s Back 98: The lamb would have to be killed. I felt embarrassed and upset because I was sure I would be ‘put down the track’ [DNZE]. |