Green’s Dictionary of Slang

kicks n.3

[kick n.5 (4)]

(orig. US) thrills, pleasure.

[US]Andy Kirk ‘All the Jive is Gone’ 🎵 All the jive is gone! / All the jive is gone! / What an awful fix, can’t get my kicks, / ’Cause all the jive is gone!
[US]Cab Calloway ‘Are You All Reet’ 🎵 Stashed like a top, / Don’t miss a stop, / I dig my kicks from the groovy lot!
[US]D. Burley Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 29: Dig my kicks as that Cat, / Morpheus, sends me right out of this world.
[US]Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 149: It was good kicks for us – about the last real spurt of collective improvisation.
[US]Lieber & Stoller ‘Jailhouse Rock’ 🎵 Bugsy turned to Shifty and he said nix, nix / I wanna stick around a while and get my kicks.
[UK]T. Keyes All Night Stand 8: Gerry the joker, the thinker, the kicks-merchant.
[UK]Oz 4 11: Marriage as kicks, as a happening, as a rave.
[US](con. 1950s) D. Goines Whoreson 173: I know you have all had your kicks.
[UK]P. Larkin ‘Posterity’ in High Windows 27: Not out of kicks or something happening – / One of those old-type natural fouled-up guys.
[US]J. Ellroy Brown’s Requiem 182: I don’t play golf. It’s not my idea of kicks.
[UK]Guardian Rev. 26 June 9: War offers him ‘chicks, kicks, cash and chaos’.
N. Knight ‘Not Even a Mouse’ in ThugLit Nov.-Dec. [ebook] Never meant any harm — just wanted some kicks.
[US](con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 12: The dump job. The bent schoolmarm. Saturday night kicks gone wrong.

In phrases

get one’s kicks (v.)

(orig. US black) to enjoy oneself.

[US] (ref. to late 19C) N. Kimball Amer. Madam (1981) 237: I always figured there was something screwy with a john if he had to get his kicks watching fake women carry on and cop each other’s joints.
[US]Goodman & Kolodin Kingdom of Swing 32: [W]e didn’t care much about the money at the time, because we got our kicks out of playing.
[US]Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 3: I still get my kicks out of the music I picked up in that reform school.
[US]Roy Brown ‘Route 66’ 🎵 Get your kicks on Route 66.
[UK]C. MacInnes Absolute Beginners 10: I know better than ever to argue with [...] anyone else who gets his kicks from an idea.
[US]N. Heard Howard Street 18: Probably up there getting her kicks along with that john.
[US]D. Goines Street Players 27: Does he get his kicks from beatin’ people up?
[US](con. early 1950s) J. Ellroy L.A. Confidential 139: You get your kicks that way?
[Scot]I. Welsh Filth 322: Now I can see that this was how he was getting his kicks.
[US]T. Udo Vatican Bloodbath 9: All those sick twisted rich fucks around him go ’bout humpin’ little kids and watchin’ folks fightin’ to the death to get their kicks.
get one’s kicks off (v.)

(US) to come to orgasm.

[US]D. Goines Dopefiend (1991) 139: Then the son of a bitch will see enough to get his kicks off.