Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (US tramp) a youth, a naïve boy.

1912		(con. c.1885) ‘A-No. 1’ Curse of Tramp Life 64: Reform? None of such wise talk from a little ‘Gunsel’ (young boy) like you.
1929		V.W. Saul ‘Vocab. of Bums’ in AS IV:5 340: Guntzel — A green youth.
1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 88: Gonsil. — A young tramp, not yet taken in hand and bent to his will by an older man. A boy.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 103: gonsil An inexperienced youth [...] an unsophisticated youth. [Ibid.] 109–10: gunsel [...] guntzel an inexperienced youth.
1974		J. Charyn Marilyn The Wild (2003) 150: The gunsel was in agony.
a.1985		‘The Open Book’ in G. Logsdon Whorehouse Bells Were Ringing (1995) 113: Now I might be a gullible gunsel, but at that, / why, I ain’t too damn dumb.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 88: Gunsels fresh out of Y[outh] A[uthority], their secret shivs thirsting for the blood to build an Adult rep.

2. (US tramp/prison) a young, homosexual boy who accompanies a tramp or acts as lover to a masculine prisoner.

1914		Jackson & Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Sl. 40: gunshel [...] A boy; a youth; a neophyte of trampdom. Example: ‘The tribe’s got a gunshel pivoting on the stem with a bug,’ i. e., ‘The gang of tramps have sent a boy up on the main street to beg under pretense of having a wounded or disabled arm or limb.’.
1918		‘A-No. 1’ Mother of the Hoboes 44: The Rating Of The Tramps 47 Gonsil.
1918		H. Simon ‘Prison Dict.’ in AS VIII:3 (1933) 27/1: GONZEL. Catamite. [Perhaps a variant of the German ganzel.].
1923		N. Anderson Hobo 101: [From A No. 1, The Famous Tramp] 47. Gonsil. Youth not yet adopted by jocker.
1928		C. Panzram Journal of Murder in Gaddis & Long (2002) 116: I have met every kind of a crook there is. [...] wolves and gunsels.
1930		(con. 1900) G. Milburn Hobo’s Hornbook 37: Oh, each gunsil got directions / To go yegg a swag of sections / For the jockers in convention / In the hall at Montreal. [Ibid.] ‘The Dealer Gets It All’ in Hobo’s Hornbook 149: But I’ve glommed my share of rattlers – had a gunsil, bo, or two.
1932		V.F. Nelson Prison Days and Nights 149: The passive participants in sodomy are called ‘punks’, ‘gonsils’, ‘mustard pots’, or even more direct physical terms are used.
1934		L. Berg Prison Nurse (1964) 64: Why, that hussy has become the worst gonsil in the place.
1936		Mencken Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: The tramp who carries a boy with him, to rustle food for him and serve him otherwise, is a jocker or wolf, and the boy is a punk, gazooney, guntzel, lamb or prushun.
1939		‘Hotel Sl.’ in AS XIV:3 Oct. 240/1: guncel Male homosexual.
1941		Maltese Falcon [film script] Let’s give them the gunsel. He actually did shoot Thursby and Jacobi, didn’t he?
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 103: gonsel A boy kept for unnatural purposes.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 84/1: Gonsel. See Gunzel. [Ibid.] 89/1: Gunzel. 1. (P) A male oral sodomist, or passive pederast.
1953		T. Runyon In For Life 99: I’ve seen the patient papas carrying sacks of canteen stuff for their boys — also known as [...] gunsels, kazoonies, kids, brats, and, mostly, punks.
1965		Guild Dict. Homosexual Terms 19: gonsil (n.): A young pedicant. (Slang.).
1965		C. Himes Cotton Comes to Harlem (1967) 50: I got a word first for Early Riser’s gunsel.
1972		B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular 107: Hobo slang (kwn ’30s & ’40s) [...] The adolescent who usually doubled as cook/lover to a homosexual hobo was called a [...] ginzel, gonsel, gunzl.
1977		D. Powis Signs of Crime 186: Gunsel A transatlantic term (now not uncommon because of American hippy influence) for a passive adolescent male homosexual. Nothing whatsoever to do with firearms or their use.
1986–7		Maledicta IX 172: Now there are boys in every disco who paint their faces, but they are punks in another sense of the word, not gunsels.
1988		H. Max Gay (S)language 18: Gonsel — gay youth — from Yiddish expression for gosling.
1992		Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 60: Punk One of the oldest and most widely used terms signifying a homosexual […]. (Archaic: gunzel).
2001		N. Tosches Where Dead Voices Gather (ms.) 256: In white hobo slang, going back to the late nineteenth century, the words denoted a lesser, inexperienced member of the tramp community, and in time came to imply homosexuality as well: a ‘gay cat’ being the punk-queer companion of an older, veteran hobo, synonymous with ‘gunsel’, a Yiddish-derived pejorative epithet of like meaning [...] that had been a part of white criminal slang since the early years of the twentieth century.

3. (US) a stupid or contemptible man.

1932		in N.Y. Times 27 Mar. 28: Gunsel – either a stupid or a contemptible person.
1939		Howsley Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl. 22: gunsel — untrustworthy, treacherous, uncertain; dumb (principally used by gangsters of Jewish extraction).
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 103: gonsil [...] a stupid person. [Ibid.] 110: gunzel [...] a fool.
1971–2		C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 205: gunsel, n. – [...] a man of low mentality (1950s).

4. an informer, a criminal, a gunman.

1944		R.L. Bellem ‘Killer’s Cure’ Hollywood Detective Mar. 🌐 She was hooked up with a hood, a small time grifter and gunsel.
1945		R.L. Bellem ‘Dead Don’t Dream’ in Hollywood Detective July 🌐 His aim was almost as good as his reflexes. There came a shrill squeal from the gunsel.
1953		‘Curt Cannon’ ‘The Death of Me’ in I Like ’Em Tough (1958) 100: Was the pin-striped gunsel one of your boys?
1954		Mad mag. Dec. 23: A gun-happy young gunzel leans on a hitching rail, looking for trouble.
1963		L.F. Freed Crime in S. Afr. 106: A ‘two-way guy’ or a ‘gonsil’ is a treacherous person.
1971		T. Thackrey Thief 303: A roost for gunsels. Hoods, heisters, gangsters – like, criminals you know?
1981		J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 148: Reyes Sandoval, Mexican gunsel, was a family man.
2000		G.V. Higgins At End of Day (2001) 40: He [...] thought this place was a promising place to chat up young gunsels.
2012		A. Bergen ‘Dread Fellow Churls’ in Crime Factory: Hard Labour [ebook] My gunsel spitooned a comic ‘Tsk tsk’.

5. (US prison) a (young) troublemaker.

1952		in Lethbridge (Alberta) Herald 22 Mar. 14/4: Of course, you’ll find many gazooneys and guntzels around the race tracks as well as the carnivals.
1967		M. Braly On the Yard (2002) 246: Someone was staring at him. A gunsel, he thought immediately, using the term they applied to any kid on the make for trouble or a reputation as a hard rock.
1976		M. Braly False Starts 101: The three gunsels who had shot up one of the central counties and locked the sheriff in his own jail.
1987		S. King Misery (1988) 124: ‘Ho-ho, Paulie,’ [...] the typewriter said in the tough gunsel’s voice he had made up for it.
2000		Other Side of the Wall: Prisoner’s Dict. July 🌐 Gunsel: From the corrupted ‘gunslinger,’ a new inmate who talks tough. (Fed., archaic).
2007		M. Rowson Stuff 42: Sullen skinheads who I always assume are either gangsters’ gunsels, neo-Nazis or gay.