Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the head.

1831		Navy at Home II 204: D—n your black cocoa nut, let the man go on.
1834		W.A. Caruthers Kentuckian in N.Y. I 66: He dropped over [...] I rather suspicion he thought a two year old colt’s heels had got a taste of his cocoanut.
1845		J. Lindridge Sixteen-String Jack 133: If I don’t drop this switch upon their cocoa-nuts, my names not George Hanger.
1848		Bell’s Life in Sydney 30 Dec. 2/6: Kenny shook his cocoa nut like a mandarin in a Ludgate Hill Grocer’s.
1848		‘Ned Buntline’ Mysteries and Miseries of N.Y. V 46: Maybe ’twas him that I lammed! [...] I gave some dandy chap thunder over the cocoa-nut, last night!
1855		(con. 1827) Fights for the Championship 106: Their cocoa-nuts echoed again with the quick following blows.
1858		Green Mountain Freeman (Montpelier, VT) 4 Feb. 1/1: ‘You’ll get your cocoa-nut cracked one of these days, Pixley, for talking so open-mouthed about counterfeit money’.
1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 79/2: Our ‘molls’ [...] set up a merry laugh at our comical cocoa-nuts, in which we joined.
1866		Wild Boys of London I 36/1: Not that I likes a tile—it make’s a cove’s coker-nut so hot, and my hair don’t curl.
1870		Old Hunks in Darkey Drama 5 45: Dat would have broke a white folk’s cocoa-nut.
1873		Sl. Dict. 124: Cocoa-nut, the head. [...] Also, when anything is explained to a man for the first time, it is not unusual for him to say, ‘Ah, that accounts for the milk in the cocoa-nut’ ? a remark which has its origin in a clever but not very moral story.
1883		J. Hay Bread-Winners (1884) 241: If I was you [...] I’d crack Art. Farnham’s cocoa-nut.
1887		G. Devol Forty Years a Gambler 251: I cocked my eye on the nigger’s head, and saw that it was one of those wedge-shaped cocoanuts so peculiar to people of African descent.
1893		P.H. Emerson Signor Lippo 87: I got a fair headache and felt queer about the coker-nut.
1895		Crowe Aus. Sl. Dict. 18: Cocoa Nut, a pugilistic term for the head.
1898		F. Dumont Dumont’s Joke Book 29: Is it possible that my hyphenated sentences are entirely too complex for the intellect contained in that diminutive cocoanut?
1901		Marvel XV 5 Apr. 389: Get up or I’ll crack that cocoanut of yours!
1901		W.S. Walker In the Blood 259: ‘’Ow’s yer ’ead?’ asked the old digger. ‘Bother my ’ead,’ replied Squiffy. ‘It’s my coker-nut, ain’t it, an’ not yours.’.
1907		Gem 30 Mar. 8: Break his cocoanut for him, Baby!
1909		Truth (Brisbane) 10 Oct. 12/8: [T]hat accounts for the absince of the milk of riverince in your IMPIDENT-LOOKING COCOANUT.
1910		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Dec. 35/1: Wot yer addlin’ yer silly ole cokernut over now, Jerry?
1912		R.W. Brown ‘Word-List From Western Indiana’ in DN III:viii 573: cocoanut, n. The head. ‘Watch out, or one of those bricks will break your cocoanut.’.
1925		Wodehouse Carry on, Jeeves 154: ‘All clear up to now?’ Jeeves inclined the coco-nut.
1926		E. Walrond Tropic Death (1972) 26: Go under de bed an’ lay down befo’ I crack yo’ cocoanut.
1932		(con. 1910s) J.T. Farrell Young Lonigan in Studs Lonigan (1936) 10: And many’s the plunk in the cocoanut that Paddy Lonigan got.
1936		‘George Orwell’ Keep The Aspidistra Flying (1962) 17: Lawrence was all right, and Joyce even better before he went off his coconut.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1950		J.T. Farrell ‘Milly and the Porker’ in Amer. Dream Girl (1950) 199: If you ever dared to open your pay envelope, Flow would break every dish in your house on that coconut of yours.
1954		Wodehouse Jeeves and the Feudal Spirit 131: I shook the coconut.
1960		(con. WWII) R. Leckie Marines! 67: They were going to grab the guard and hold him while the rest of them played Ping-pong with your coconut.
1996		H. Roth From Bondage 279: He had gotten his lumps in the shop, lumps on the coconut.
2011		J.J. Connolly Viva La Madness 55: His bank balance has seriously cracked my coconut.

2. in pl., large female breasts.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

3. (US) $1; thus coconuts, money.

1928		‘Carnival Sl.’ AS III:3 254/1: String of coca nuts—Money.
1930		Amer. Mercury Dec. 420: The whole hundred thousand coconuts [W&F].
1931		D. Runyon ‘Gentlemen, the King!’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 173: He is a smart guy [...] and has plenty of coconuts.
1932		V.F. Nelson Prison Days and Nights 206: I suppose Estelle will stick. She better [...] after all the cocoanuts I threw away on her.
1938		D. Runyon ‘It Comes Up Mud’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 534: Mr. Paul D. Veere is a New York banker, and he has [...] plenty of coco-nuts.
1970		H.E. Bates A Little of What You Fancy (1985) 538: ‘Counting the coconuts, Mr Larkin, sir?’ he merely said.

4. attrib. use of sense 3, with overtones of attendant inferiority.

2000

R. Antoni Grandmother’s Erotic Folktales 101: In any case five-thousand coconut dollars didn’t mean nothing to us a-tall, not even a fart! [Ibid.] 101: We would soon be using President Franklins to wipe we culos and light we cigars and not none of that coconut nastiness!

5. (W.I./UK/Aus. black teen) a black person who has ‘sold out’ to white values; they are ‘brown on the outside but white within’.

1977		in K. Gilbert Living Black 205: I call them coconuts because they do not have a real identity as Aboriginal people. They’re dark outside, white inside. They don’t know how to behave with the tribals.
1984		J. Wambaugh Lines and Shadows 29: Those people living south of the imaginary line who feel they are nothing like the northern ‘coconuts,’ who are brown on the outside but white within.
1989		J. Morton Lowspeak 41: Coconut – term of racial abuse amongst West Indians, suggesting pro-white feelings – brown outside, white inside.
1999		(con. 1979–80) A. Wheatle Brixton Rock (2004) 28: My paps booted me out when I was only fifteen. [...] I hate the coconut.
1999		Observer Mag. 16 May 31: DJ Trevor Nelson has achieved an impressive visibility without alienating his black audience. ‘Not in the sense of being a coconut — black on the outside, white on the inside.’.
2000		Indep. Rev. 5: For his pains he [i.e. a black academic] was branded ‘a coconut’, black on the outside, white on the inside.
2001		(con. 1981) A. Wheatle East of Acre Lane 76: ’Pon de front line is pure undercover beastman, to blowoh. An’ you can’t tell de coconuts from de pure chocolate, man.
2002		Guardian Rev. 30 Mar. 2: The insults ‘coconut’, ‘Bounty bar’ and their American equivalent ‘Oreo’ — all of which mean black on the outside and white on the inside.
2006		G. Malkani Londonstani (2007) 21: He [i.e. an Anglo-Asian] was a muthafuckin coconut. So white he was inside his brown skin. [Ibid.] 23: Din’t matter what you called them. Coconuts, Bounty bars, Oreo biscuits or any other food that was white on the inside.
2008		A. Wheatle Dirty South 91: Why do dumb-ass ghetto chicks love Eastenders? It can’t be for the idiot coconut black people in it.
2008		Mail and Guardian (Johannesburg) 19 Mar. 🌐 I’m a coconut.
2018		Twitter 9 May 🌐 Those calling Sajid Javed a ‘coconut’ should [find] better things to judge him by.
2023		Twitter 2 May 🌐 Can’t we send Suella, Priti and Rishi to Rwanda instead? [...] (these) three coconuts have never been more desperate to assimilate to white people in their lives.

6. (Aus./N.Z.) a South Sea Islander.

1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 29/2: coconut insulting nickname for a Pacific Islander.
2002		A. Duff Jake’s Long Shadow 236: Samoan! Jake with mock exaggerated outrage. No son of mine’s bringing home a bloody coconut!
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. [as cit. 1988].

7. in pl., the testicles.

[1902		D. St John Memoirs of Madge Buford 80: I squeezed his cocoanut-like balls].
1993		T. Jones Pugilist at Rest 79: I had heard that Joe [...] like Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises, received a groin wound – that he had lost his coconuts.