polone, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

polone n.

also paloma, palone, paloney, polony

[Ital. pollone, chick; however, note Polari etymologist WS Wilcox in a letter 25/11/99: ‘On the origins of polone I venture to suggest an alternative to previous ideas : Mayhew, London Labour and the London Poor (1861–2), gives the cant term hay-bag (a hay or straw mattress) for woman, very insulting, but paglione is an almost exact Italian translation of this. One of the possible suggested sources, pollone – plant-shoot, I feel unlikely, since in Italy it also has the slang meaning of penis’]

(Ling. Fr./Polari)

1. a young woman.

1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 18 Apr. 18/3: ‘Thou shall not suffer a witch to live,’ is an order of the old books which was obeyed with the most cheerful alacrity up to the last century; when, from the year 1484, the number of artists in the black art grilled, and otherwise disposed of in the land of ‘paloneys’ alone, dotted up to something considerably over 100,000.
c.1900		C. Osborne [perf. T.E. Dunville] ‘Getting to the bottom of it’ 🎵 A big fat man at the dust-yard gate / Is cuddling your polony.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 8 Aug. Red Page/4: Dinnyhayeser set lurk, lumping polony Kingpin’s straight monniker, chatting dead sudden stink Fogwards by long punt.
c.1912		T.E. Dunville [perf.] ‘And the Verdict Was’ 🎵 And the verdict was, / A little boat - two polonies - caught a crab - Davy Jones.
1934		P. Allingham Cheapjack 202: I’d rather ’andle a man any day than a lot of these silly palones.
1938		G. Greene Brighton Rock (1943) 24: What about that polony he was with?
1939		in W.C. Fields By Himself (1974) 336: There’s a tough paloma comes in by the name of Chicago Molly.
1947		J. Maclaren-Ross ‘The Dark Diceman’ in Bitten by the Tarantula (2005) 203: Judies, dolls, palones, whatever you care to call ’em.
1959		F. Norman in Encounter n.d. in Norman’s London (1969) 64: Get you, darling, all done up in drag, anyone would think you were a palone.
1962		R. Hauser Homosexual Society Appendix 3 167: Polone, woman.
1967		Took & Feldman ‘Bona Bijou Tourettes’ Round the Horne 30 Apr. [BBC radio] Divine. Sitting, sipping a tiny drinkette, vada·ing the great butch omis and dolly little palones trolling by.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
1982		Maledicta VI:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 139: Parlyaree in homosexual use […] gives us nanti (no), bona[r] (good), [h]omi[e] (man), and polone (woman) and other mangled foreign words (cartso = penis, from Italian cazzo, etc.).
1999		M. Coward in Verbatim 24:2 n.p.: An omi is a man, a palone is a woman, and an omipalone is therefore self-explanatory.
2019		P. Baker Fabulosa 296/1: palone, polone, polony, pollone, paloney, polonee palogne a woman or girl .
2023		R. Milward Man-Eating Typewriter 76: I hadn’t set opals on palones such as this [...] in all my petty lavvy.

2. an effeminate man.

1985		‘Jennifer Blowdryer’ Modern English 6: bona palome (n): A gay Cockney word for hunk.
2003		P. Baker Fantabulosa.