stick-up, n. — Green’s Dictionary of Slang

stick-up n.

1. a hold-up, an armed robbery.

1864		E. Wardley Confessions of Wavering Worthy 167: We looked forward to the unpleasant possibility of a ‘stick-up.’ We therefore separated thirty or forty yards, keeping the horse in the middle [...] by which means we made it impossible for equal numbers to take us by surprise, and cover us with revolver or carbine by one simultaneous movement.
1908		H. Green Maison De Shine 55: It’s a stickup!
1912		D. Lowrie My Life in Prison 54: Here I am a five-time loser, doin’ twenty f’r a stick-up.
1925		D. Hammett ‘The Gutting of Couffignal’ Story Omnibus (1966) 19: I had helped send him to San Quentin [...] for his part in a payroll stick-up.
1931		(con. 1900) C.W. Willemse Behind The Green Lights 39: Most of them had criminal records and had been guilty of stick-ups, burglaries and other serious crimes.
c.1940–5		‘Myles na gCopaleen’ Best of Myles (1968) 32: This is a stick-up. Slip off that ring and drop it in the fold of my trousers.
1947		North. Standard (Darwin, NT) 8 Aug. 9/1: [headline] Juvenile Stick=Up.
1949		Herbert Wilson ‘I Was King of the Safecrackers’ in Hamilton Men of the Und. 139: He had already distinguished himself in a couple of bank stick-ups.
1953		‘William Lee’ Junkie (1966) 15: The hard confident voice [...] that would make a stickup sound easy and sure of success.
1964		H. Selby Jr Last Exit to Brooklyn 27: The glory of having known someone killed by the police during a stickup was the greatest event of his life.
1971		R.D. Pharr S.R.O. (1998) 12: [M]y nerves just couldn’t stand all that noise, blood and stick-ups.
1980		(con. 1940s–60s) H. Huncke ‘Russian Blackie’ in Eve. Sun Turned Crimson (1998) 101: Hardcore Forty-second Street hustlers [...] reputed to go out occasionally on jobs — maybe a stickup or burglary.
1989		Beano Comic Library No. 182 12: This is a stick-up! Hand over your sticky buns – pronto!
1990		(con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 165: The poor bastard probably thinks it’s just a stickup.
1999		Indep. Rev. 6 Aug. 5: Robbery victims can demonstrate their knowledge of the code. ‘The stickup can resemble a ballet, in which each side smoothly performs a choreographed part.’.
2000		Guardian G2 26 Jan. 22: A stick-up in a New York hotel.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl.
2006		B. Matthews Intractable [ebook] [H]e was unlucky enough to get caught with a pistol that tied him in to a stick-up.
2010		Codella and Bennett Alphaville (2011) 50: The stickups we could never nail him for go from bold to ridiculous.
2020		D. Winslow ‘Broken’ in Broken 32: ‘Came in after Katrina to do drywalling, found it more lucrative to do stickups’.

2. attrib. use of sense 1.

1946		W.P. McGivern ‘Manchu Terror’ in Goodstone Pulps (1970) 24/2: He’s been using that stick-up gag [...] for years.
1974		N. Heard Cold Fire Burning 11: [S]pecializing in ‘touch-off’ and ‘stick-up’ tactics, i.e., liberating legal tender.
1992		R. Price Clockers 21: A stickup crew from Newark [...] was hitting on Dempsy dealers.
1997		(con. 1970s) G. Pelecanos King Suckerman (1998) 4: Stickup kids who had done it the same way.
2002		Simon & Burns ‘The Pager’ Wire ser. 1 ep. 5 [TV script] The stick-up crews that’s giving us the trouble.
2008		R. Price Lush Life 270: How did you know the stickup team was two black kids?
2008		(con. mid-1970s) ‘Grandmaster Flash’ Adventures 63: ‘Stick-up niggas robbed the sound system outta the Hunts Point Palace last night’.
2015		P. Beatty Sellout (2016) 115: Maybe once in a while a curious stick-up kid might [...] look me up and down.
2020		S.A. Crosby Blacktop Wasteland 52: ‘We can get paid. Real money. Not some pissy-ass stick-up money’.
2023		Rayman & Blau Riker’s 203: ‘Help! Help!’ I’m hoping that a stickup kid will come by or something.

3. an armed robber.

1896		F. Hutcheson Barkeep Stories 24: ‘[I]f I met him meself in a dark street I’d t’ink I was agin a stick-up. He cert’nly was a tough-lookin’ bloke’.
1905		N.Y. Times 2 Jan. (Cent. Supplement) n.p.: The man [...] is declared to be a typical ‘yeggman of the stick-up’ class [...] The ‘stick-up’ is always a powerful man, whose duties are to intimidate intruders and kill them, if necessary, while the others are at work on a safe [DA].
1908		A. Stringer Under Groove 6: [He] had dawdled along as a hobo stick-up.
1917		‘A-No. 1’ From Coast to Coast with Jack London 34: Do you recall the turn which the ‘stickups’ today handed to the poor bum?
1921		P. & T. Casey Gay-cat 234: Mostly we has ter cop off the strong-armers an’ stick-ups an’ grifters an’ dips an’ other ringtails wot pester a circus.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 150: All he has left is his reputation, and he would die rather than lose it to a couple of ‘stick-ups’.
1933		J. Spenser Limey 256: The other men were bank robbers, pay-roll robbers, stick-ups, ‘box’ (safe) blowers and nondescripts.
1939		Howsley Argot: Dict. of Und. Sl.
1943		I. Wolfert Tucker’s People (1944) 254: He thinks maybe I’m a stickup.
1955		‘Blackie’ Audett Rap Sheet 239: He was a con-man, much as he was a stick-up.
1961		D. Hammett ‘A Man Named Thin’ in Nightmare Town (2001) 338: Just as she put a foot inside the door, this stick-up backed into her, both of them taking a tumble.

In compounds

stick-up man (n.) (also stick-up artist, …boy, ...guy, ...kid, …nut, stick-em-up kid) [stick up v.¹ (1) + artist n. (1)/guy n.² (1)/kid n.¹ (4)/nut n.¹ (3a)]

1. an armed robber.

1905		F. Hutchison Philosophy of Johnny the Gent 83: ‘[T]hey was told he was a desperate stick-up guy’.
1912		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 78: He was standing on the corner — He looked like a stickup guy so I hauled him in.
1916		W. Scott Seventeen Years in the Und. 60: The stick-up man with his stealthy tread and ever-ready ‘rod’.
1917		R. Lardner ‘Carmen’ in Gullible’s Travels 19: The dips or stick-up guys, or whatever they are, tries to get Genevieve to go along with them in the car.
1918		Jackson Dly News (MS) 1 Apr. 7/3: Crook Chatter [...] ‘A stickup artist always assumes that the “tailer” carries a rod’.
1922		Eve. Star (Wshington, DC) 3 Dec. 4/6: Before the stick-up guy got fingerin’ his trigger [...] Cocky was in on him with a smash of his head.
1924		G. Henderson Keys to Crookdom 95: The ‘stick-up’ artists have not vanished entirely.
1926		J. Black You Can’t Win 117: That would be just the place, kid, if you were going to shoot a burglar or stick-up man.
1933		C. Himes ‘Prison Mass’ in Coll. Stories (1990) 164: Then she had turned on the ‘leaks’ — just a pitiful victim of a big, bad, stick-up man.
1938		R. Chandler ‘Red Wind’ in Red Wind (1946) 25: I’m a stick-up artist now, am I?
1940		H. Asbury Gangs of Chicago (2002) 128: Flossie Moore and Emma Ford, both of whom were [...] gifted stick-up artists and panel-workers.
1946		J. Evans Halo in Blood (1988) 235: The supposed stick-up man had a mile-long record.
1949		W.R. Burnett Asphalt Jungle in Four Novels (1984) 180: Dix is [...] a small-time stick-up guy.
1949		Archives Neurology and Psych. July 86: I’m no stick-up man or nothing like that [DA].
1952		C. Hamilton Men of the Und. 34: The bank burglar, not to be confused with the bank stickup man.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 23: Others bought guns and became stick-up men.
1956		‘Ed Lacy’ Men from the Boys (1967) 55: I looked through the paper to see if they’d caught Mr. Mudd, the amateur stick-up artist.
1963		B. Hecht Gaily, Gaily 93: Identified as a heretofore small-time stick-up man.
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 283: The people who dealt the guns, the stick-up artists, the people who sold reefers.
a.1967		‘Sporting Life’ in D. Wepman et al. Life (1976) 162: There’s the neighborhood cop at the numbers drop, / Shaking down the run, / But he may lose his grand to a stickup man / At the point of a blue steel gun.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Pimp 100: You a stick up man?
1970		‘Red’ Rudensky Gonif 79: The stick-up nut can get riddled or wind up bumping some Dick.
1977		(con. 1960s) D. Goines Black Gangster (1991) 183: They were seasoned stick-up men.
1977		J.G. Dunne True Confessions (1979) 9: A few stickup men, an occasional shooter.
1982		Grandmaster Flash & the Furious Five ‘The Message’ 🎵 Turned stick-up kid, look what you done did.
1985		N. George ‘Rappin’ with Russell’ in Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos (1994) 52: A room full of coked-up stickup kids.
1988		D. Woodrell Muscle for the Wing 90: You always been a stickup guy?
1989		(con. 1982–6) T. Williams Cocaine Kids (1990) 110: They protecting themselves from the stick-up kids.
1989		Pileggi & Scorsese Goodfellas [film script] 48: You know who goes to jail? Nigger stickup men.
1989		C. Hiaasen Skin Tight 75: Hoods, dopers, scammers, bikers and stick-up artists.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 98: Crapshooters, shoplifters, stickup men [...] everybody stopped off at the store.
1997		‘Q’ Deadmeat 438: I started off as a stick em up kid . . . an look at me now.
1997		Simon & Burns Corner (1998) 11: Shoot a corner dealer in the knee and take his stahs, you’re a stick-up boy and fair game for either the slingers or police. [Ibid.] 65: Fairly begging for the attentions of a knocker or stickup artist.
1999		Guardian Guide 12–18 June 89: Stick-up guy Harrison Ford.
2001		Source Aug. 47: Shielding celebrities from aggressive fans, stickup kids and even potential assassins is incredibly dangerous work.
2002		Simon & Burns ‘One Arrest’ Wire ser. 1 ep. 7 [TV script] Wallace been all fucked up, since they got that stick-up boy, you know.
2003		A.N. LeBlanc Random Family 83: Cesar had gone from acting like a hoodlum to being one [...] He called himself a stickup kid.
2007		N. ‘Razor’ Smith Raiders 65: Ronnie mostly worked alone as a stick-up artist.
2008		‘Grandmaster Flash’ Adventures 97: Joe Kidd was a stick-up artist of the first degree. But tonight he was mackin’ [...] ‘This is my girl Maria’.
2010		Codella and Bennett Alphaville (2011) 275: He’s a stickup guy. He’s got a dope habit from here to Japan.
2012		‘Dutch’ ? (Pronounced Que) [ebook] I ain’t no stick-up kid! [...] I ain’t never stuck up no crack spot!
2017		D. Winslow The Force [ebook] ‘[T]his black kid [...] walks through the door with a gun, yells it’s a holdup. World’s dumbest stickup guy, right?’.
2020		D. Whish-Wilson Shore Leave 184: [A] notorious stick-up man and safe-breaker.

2. in weak use of sense 1, an act of non-criminal extortion,e.g. in negotiating one’s salary.

1994

M. Ribowsky Don’t Look Back 222: Satch now demanded, and got, from J.L. Wilkinson an astounding $800 up front. While that stickup imperiled Satch’s sainted image in Negro ball [etc].