Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(drugs) an amphetamine user.

1968

H. Ellison ‘The Hippie-Slayer’ in Deadly Streets (1983) 107: The speeders, the downer fools, the crystal freaks.

under the influence of amphetamines.

2007

D. McDonald Luck in the Greater West (2008) 57: Whitey and Ronnie drank the rest of the case with speedy, flared nostrils.

see separate entries.

(drugs) marijuana, phencyclidine and crack cocaine combined and smoked.

2001

ONDCP Street Terms 20: Speedboat — Marijuana, PCP, and crack combined and smoked.

(drugs) a mixture of amphetamine and heroin, seen and experienced as a potent rival/replacement for crack cocaine.

1998

Source Oct. 150: Stay da fuck outta Sugar Hill with dat shit y’all niggas be callin Speedcoke.

(Aus.) wraparound sunglasses (supposedly popularized among amphetamine sellers).

2013		Urban Dict. 22 Nov. 🌐 speed dealers Originally used by Sydney skaters as a term for wrap around sunglasses typically worn by bikies, westies and speed dealers.
2021		Betoota-isms 91: Speed Dealers [...] 1. Sunglasses purchased from a service station 2. Wraparound-style sunglasses with reflective lenses, often lime-green or yellow.

1. (drugs) a regular user of amphetamines.

1967		Oz 6 11: The life expectancy of the average speed-freak, from first shot to the morgue, is five years.
1972		Milner & Milner Black Players vii: Looking back at the parade which has passed through our lives, we see [...] sociologists, entertainers, street cats, winos, speed freaks, artists.
1985		J. Wambaugh Secrets of Harry Bright (1986) 187: It’s got a big ugly mouth, a wimpy body, and hops around like a speed freak!
1993		I. Welsh Trainspotting 73: Speed’s my drug, it goes well with drink [...] Tommy, the pure speed freak.
1998		K. Anderson Night Dogs 153: A drunk, 250 pound speed-freak Indian.
2000		N. Griffiths Grits 82: Tha expression yer see on-a feyces-a people around pissheads or speedfreaks or nutters.
2004		W. Plummer Holy Goof 125: Generally the A-head was brought down from his polychromed nirvana by the speed freak’s wired kinetics and logorrhea.
2013		J. Stahl Bad Sex on Speed 19: The so-small-only-speedfreaks-would-notice thought balloon.
2015		G. Disher Heat [ebook] The idiot speed freak who’d arrived.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1972		E. Shrake Strange Peaches 150: The speed-freak actor, who had just been released from the hospital, jumped off the porch and broke his leg.
2007		C. Goffard Snitch Jacket 170: Now here I was, alone at the bar in a speedfreak fog.
2010		L. Redhead Thrill City [ebook] Tiara, the speed-freak stripper.

3. see also SE compounds below.

(drugs) methcathinone, a form of amphetamine that produces a more intense and longer lasting ‘high’ than does cocaine.

1990		K.F. Tucker in LifeWay Church mag. 🌐 On top of all this I had been doing a considerable amount of coke and bathtub speed.
1993		Illinois Police ‘Intelligence Report: Methcathinone’ at totse.com 🌐 A new name for Cat [i.e. Methcathinone] has recently surfaced in Wisconsin where some bikers are calling it ‘bathtub speed.’.
2001		ONDCP Street Terms 2: Bathtub speed — Methcathinone.
2009		J. Stahl Pain Killers 251: Lots of stories don’t add up [...] Especially when there’s a lot of bathtub stimulant sprinkled in.

(drugs) MDMA.

2001		ONDCP Street Terms 14: Lover’s speed — Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA). [Ibid.] 20: Speed for lovers — Methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA).
2003		Community Counseling and Resource Center 🌐 ‘Designer Drugs’: MDA – love drug, speed for lovers, mellow drug of America.

to talk fast, usu. under the influence of amphetamine.

1978

R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 222: ‘We both knew, man.’ I started speed-rapping.

(orig. US) suitable, to one’s own taste.

1930		W.R. Burnett Iron Man 44: He ought to write poetry and crochet. That’s about his speed.
1934		H. Roth Call It Sleep (1977) 409: Say, listen O’Toole dere’s a couple o’ coozies in de back [...] Jist yer speed!

(orig. US) unsuited to one’s taste.

1933		J.T. Farrell Gas-House McGinty 154: Fairies ain’t my speed.
1947		C. Willingham End as a Man (1952) 146: She’s not my speed! [...] I don’t want the damn stuff.
1961		L. Block Diet of Treacle (2008) 107: Because a cold-water hole on saint Marks Place was not her speed.
1971		M. Novotny Kings Road 85: He’s not my speed, I don’t go along with violence.
1974		‘P.B. Yuill’ Hazell Plays Solomon (1976) 106: High tea at Claridge’s isn’t my speed.
1999		N. Cohn Yes We have No 202: This sedate coach-trip across London is not their speed.

a speedometer; thus speedo needle.

1934		Passing Show 21 July in DSUE (1984).
1954		T. Ronan Vision Splendid 313: He had knocked forty thousand miles on its speedo.
1961		B. Crump Hang On a Minute, Mate (1963) 25: Does your speedo work?
1971		J. Mandelkau Buttons 51: The speedo needle had broken.
1979		F. Norman Too Many Crooks Spoil the Caper 122: The speedo needle snailed up to fifty.
1989		M. Amis London Fields 120: No use fiddling the speedo on this highway.
1999		Guardian G2 16 Aug. 10: Things will happen so fast that you won’t even be able to glance down at the speedo.

see separate entries.

(US) a fan of travelling at high speed; also attrib.

c.1910		C. Sandburg Poems for the People 55: Speed Bug Edward Singleton ran his motor car into four people, two of them children.
1920		C. Sandburg ‘The Sins of Kalamazoo’ in Smoke and Steel 51: The speedbug heavens of Detroit.
1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl. 45: scorcher. A speed-bug, as in motoring.

see under bump n.¹

(orig. US) a motorcycle-mounted police officer, charged with enforcing speed limits.

1925		Dollar Mag. Dec. 205: Speed-cops are posted on the highways with powerful motor-cycles to catch unwary speeders [DA].
1939		P. Cheyney Don’t Get Me Wrong (1956) 9: A speed cop once told me that it’s dangerous to park on a curve.
1948		Sat. Eve. Post 3 July 77/3: Speed cops still speak politely to me [DA].
1968		K. Brownlow Parade’s Gone By 323: The action called for the speed cop to come tearing after Leatrice, for her car to slew around on the highway, and for the cop’s motorcycle to hit it dead.

1. a very fast runner.

1984

D. Jenkins Life Its Ownself (1985) 15: This thing a speed freak named Dreamer Tatum did to the ligament one Saturday afternoon.

2. (US black) one who enjoys driving or being driven at high speed; also attrib.

1999

Observer Screen 14 Nov. 7: A speed freak cabbie.

3. see also drug uses above.

one who consistently ignores speed limits when driving.

1914

Bulletin (Sydney) 24 Sept. 32/1: Speed hogs who have been looking for some opportunity to tear over the earth at excessive rates and quite outside the limit, will get what they want on October 5.

(US) a motor-racing champion.

1904		Motoring & Boating 2 178/2: Barney Oldfield [...] Proves Himself King of Race Drivers [...] he who had been denounced as a speed quitter on one day was eagerly hailed as the speed king on the morrow.
1913		Motor Boating Sept. 34: Frank Brocli, former mechanician for Bob Burman, ‘The Auto Speed King,’ assisted as mechanician during the Potlatch events.
1913		Illus. Technical World Mag. June n.p.: [caption] Ralph De Palma. The ‘speed king’ of 1912 [OED].
1927		Pop. Science June 20: The British speed king. Major II. O. D. Segrave, was describing his recent experience in driving his mammoth Sunbeam racer [...] over the sands of Daytona Beach, Fla., for a world's record of 207.01 miles an hour.
1930		E. Waugh Vile Bodies 174: There were Speed Kings of all nationalities, unimposing men with small moustaches.
1938		C. Graves Swiss Summer 108: German princes, English speed-kings [...] are usually to be found here [OED].
1938		Pop. Science Oct. 134: It was on this natural speedway, in 1935, that Sir Malcolm Campbell's Bluebird first passed the 300-mile-an-hour mark. In a hair-raising exhibition of driving skill, the fifty-year-old speed king brought his six-ton machine safely to a halt.
1957		‘Ed Lacy’ Lead With Your Left (1958) 18: You ain’t got your leather jacket on and this ain’t no motorcycle, so quit making like a speed king, kid.
1976		Western Mail (Cardiff) 22 Nov. 3/2: Yesterday’s event was held to raise money for the memorial fund to the Welsh speed king who died in a rally incident in the summer .

(bingo) the number 30.

1981		P. Wright Cockney Dialect and Sl. 110: 30 = speed limit.
2001		J. Burkardt ‘The Bingo Code’ Wordplay 🌐 30: speed limit.

(US teen) a womaniser.

1960

Baltimore Sun (MD) Sun. Mag. 4 Dec. 9/1: [He] stacked up as the ginchiest speed man in school.

(orig. US) one who drives excessively fast.

1927		(con. 1916) J.M. Saunders Wings (1928) 34: He was the ‘speed merchant’ of Temple and was rumoured to burn up the roads in and about the quiet community.
1937–84		Partridge DSUE (1984) 1122: [...] US; anglicised ca. 1920.
c.1943		‘Bill O. Lading’ You Chirped a Chinful!! n.p.: Speed Merchant: Fast driver.

(US) an automobile supplier specializing in the parts for (and sometimes building) modified cars.

1954		AS XXIX. 102: Speed shop, a parts house, where engine parts and equipment are sold, and sometimes where hot rods are built.
1962		Punch 17 Oct. 561/1: Engineering firms and speed shops supply every beefed or stripped refinement.
1977		Hot Car Oct. 49/3: You can often pick up reasonable headers off the shelf from a good speed shop [OED].
2003		G. Stokes ‘Bonneville Experience’ 22 Aug. at RacingRoadTrip.com 🌐 Bonneville has also been a racing environment for speed shops and manufacturing companies to excel and expand in their pioneering years. One such speed shop is SO-CAL Speed Shop founded in 1946 by Alex Xydias and revived in 1997 by famed hot rod fabricator Pete Chapouris.

(S.Afr.) methylated spirits, as drunk by alcoholics and tramps.

1991

J. & W. Branford Dict. S. Afr. Eng. (4th edn).

(US Und.) a police patrol car.

1949

Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

see more power to your elbow under power n.