Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US gay) an impotent penis, incapable of erection.

1972

B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.

a foreign woman with whom a man has a sexual relationship and from whom he learns her language.

1915		Sporting Times (London) 9 Jan. 8/1: There is nothing like a sleeping dictionary to help you to a colloquial knowledge of a difficult language.
1929		J.B. Wharton Squad 21: We picked up two beauties [...] Oo-la-la —I’ve learned French out—out uv a sleepin’ dictionary—dat’s what dey’re called.
1933		in Alistair Campbell Island To Island (1984) 40: It is a well known fact that the girls make the best teachers — hence the old colonial saying, ‘Get a sleeping dictionary, my boy’.
1965		Listener 25 Mar. 461/3: He paints the old China of bound feet, [...] the endless dinners, the mistress (sleeping dictionary) as fragile as a butterfly.
2003		Recap of The Sleeping Dictionary at MovieTome.com 🌐 The language barrier between John and the Ibans is just one stumbling block he has to overcome before he’s taken seriously. His commanding officer Henry Bullard (Bob Hoskins) offers a time-tested solution: a sleeping dictionary. The thought is that language can be most quickly learned in the bedroom, and John needs to have a strong command of the local language within six months.

1. a dull, tedious person.

1927		H. Dignowity in Dobie Texas and Southwestern Lore 101: Other ‘slowpokes’ are called [...] ‘Sleeping Jesus’.
1936		J.T. Farrell World I Never Made 200: Get out of here, you little sleeping Jesus.
1983		R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

2. a person who is comatose due to the influence of heroin.

1983

R. Klein Jailhouse Jargon and Street Sl. [unpub. ms.].

(N.Z. prison) a very short sentence.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 169/2: sleepover n. a very short sentence.

(Aus./N.Z.) to sleep in the open air.

1932		cited in Partridge DSUE (1984) 1086/1: sleep at Mrs Green’s I.e. on the green grass.
1955		N. Pulliam I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 194: ‘Let the menfolks sleep with Mrs Green’ — that is, out under the wide and starry sky on the ground, or grass, if any.
1988		(ref. to 1930s) McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 104/1: sleep with Mrs Green open-air slumber in tramp parlance, c.1932.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

(drugs) to experience broken, fragmentary sleep during withdrawal from heroin.

1968

‘Sl. of Watts’ in Current Sl. III:2.

to sleep like a married man, i.e. with one’s back to one’s wife [see cit. 1785].

1785, 1788, 1796		Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue n.p.: Cow, to sleep like a cow, i.e. with a **** at one’s a--se, said of a married man; married men being supposed to sleep with their backs towards their wives, according to the following proclamation: All you that in your beds do lie / Turn to your wives, and occupy [i.e. have sex], / And when that you have done your best, / Turn a-se to a-se, and take your rest.
1811		Lex. Balatronicum.

(US Und.) to serve a prison sentence without problems, i.e. as if one were simply talking a nap.

1950

Goldin et al. DAUL 197/1: Sleep off. (P) To serve a prison sentence, especially a short one, with ease.

1. to ignore.

1997

B.G. ‘Clean Up Man’ 🎵 If you got beef would you try to sleep on it? / If it’s with me you ain’t thinkin’ cuz I’ll creep homie, / If you got beef better squeeze trigga nigga, / Kill it no matter what even if it takes four beats nigga.

2. to be unaware of or unprepared for but otherwise awake.

1987		Spoonie Gee ‘Mighty Mike Tyson’ 🎵 .
1988		Big Daddy Kane ‘Long Live the Kane’ 🎵 on Long Live the Kane [album] Phony MC’s don’t understand it, and it / Is the real thing like the taste of Coke / So never sleep on me, better stay awoke / Like a gambler in Vegas, I go for broke.
1994		Thug Life ‘Str8 Ballin’ 🎵 Pain at point blank range cause he slept on the game.
2004		Talib Kweli ‘Work It Out’ 🎵 Keep sleeping on them, soon they partner creeping on them.
2011		Meek Mill ‘A1 Everything’ 🎵 Sleep on me if you wanna take a dirt nap.

3. to attack, to criticize negatively.

1989

Lord Finesse & DJ Mike Smooth ‘Bad Mutha’ on Funky Technician 🌐 I sport my skills on a F.M. frequency / Lettin people know you better not sleep on me / I’m known as a smooth cool brother / A funky technician, call me a (bad mutha).

(US black) to act in an arrogant manner.

1946

Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 218: [She’s] always on the fence and sleeps with her glasses on.

1. to die.

[1909		Evansville Press (IN) 23 Oct. 8/2: ‘Put me to sleep with the fishes,’ he whispered [...] A hymn was sung, a prayer was said, and the body was lowered gently into the waters of the Pacific].
[1969		M. Puzo Godfather 119: The fish means that Luca Brasi is sleeping on the bottom of the ocean [...] It’s an old Sicilian message].
1972		M. Puzo Godfather [movie script] [Tessio brings in Luca Brasi’s bulletproof vest, delivered with a fish inside] sonny: What the hell is this? clemenza: It’s a Sicilian message. It means Luca Brasi sleeps with the fishes.
1980		Iowa Press-Citizen 13 Sept. 4/2: ‘If all wo en are not granted complete equality with all men within a fortnight, all men will sleep with the fishes’.
1997		Santa Cruz Sentinel (CA) 18 Apr. 11/3: Consider ‘bumped off.’ [...] Not so poteic as ‘sleeps with the fishes’.
2006		D. Winslow Winter of Frankie Machine (2007) 58: His only advantage is Mouse Junior [...] running back and saying, inevitably, ‘Frankie Machine sleeps with the fishes’.

2. in fig. uses, e.g. to be over, defeated; dismissed from a job.

1982		Clarion Ledger (Jackson, MS) 20 Nov. 1/1: ‘Win this one [a football match] or you sleep with the fishes,’ they whisper [...] It’s tough, a coach’s life.
2001		Guardian 20 Jun. 🌐 It is a virtual handbook on plot pitfalls and character developments to avoid if a show is to remain fresh and stimulating. In fact, repeat offences are so common that Hein has devised categories of sure-fire signs that a programme is about to sleep with the fishes.
2002		Guardian 25 Jun. 🌐 Advertisers withdrew their backing, editorials called for Maher’s head and even Ari Fleischer, George Bush’s honey-toned White House spokesman and consiglieri, hinted that some people had better watch what they said, with the implication that, if they didn’t, they would end up sleeping with the fishes or the televisual equivalent thereof.

3. to have been drowned, whether accidentally or as a form of homicide.

2003

Guardian 13 Mar. 🌐 The Hillman Hearse drove off at speed and pitched into the canal, whence it may never emerge. We shall have to wait till Friday to find out if Gail Hillman sleeps with the fishes.