Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(a) (US) an inadequate individual; of circumstances, a serious failure, esp. an embarrassing one or a misjudgement.

1842		Knickerbocker (N.Y.) XX 99: ‘A mistake!’ exclaimed the other; ‘not a bit of it! It’s a reg’lar built bu’st!’ [DA].
1859		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (2nd edn).
1904		Sydney Sportsman (Surry Hills, NSW) 23 Nov. 1/2: [headline] The Bike ‘Bust’.
1917		T.A. Dorgan in Zwilling TAD Lex. (1993) 22: The doctors said that my glims were no good – I was an awful bust on the up and down – I couldn’t see a thing.
1925		D. Hammett ‘Corkscrew’ Story Omnibus (1966) 221: These hicks think you’re a bust, but I know different.
1930		M. West Babe Gordon (1934) 115: Up in Harlem the Bearcat was regarded with contempt. He was laughed at as a ‘farce’, a ‘lemon’ and a ‘bust’.
1935		C. Odets Waiting for Lefty Act I: You’re a four-star-bust!
1949		N. Algren Man with the Golden Arm 286: I’m the biggest bust out of the museum.
1952		Lait & Mortimer USA Confidential 96: Providence is a bust in all ways—as a seaport, as a capital and as an old, civilized center of population.
1964		H.S. Thompson letter 28 Apr. in Proud Highway (1997) 541: But the year has been a bust.
1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972).
1978		J. Webb Fields of Fire (1980) 73: ‘My squad’s half gone. Think I got seven medevacs.’ [...] ‘Wow, man. What a bust.’.
1997–2001		Online Sl. Dict. 🌐 ‘That party was a bust.’.
1998		Source Oct. 216: Sadly Can I Bus is a bust.
2004		J. Ellroy ‘Hot-Prowl Rape-O’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 268: Nothing. Zero, zilch, bupkes, bust, goose egg, gornish.
2010		A. Steinberg Running the Books 230: The first week was a bust [...] An audible groan went up as soon as the opening black and white credits appeared on the screen.
2016		Times 5 June 🌐 We could plot to take the bint out as Kev was a bust on it.
2020		(con. 1991-94) W. Boyle City of Margins 216: ‘How’d it [i.e. a drug experience] go?’ Sky asks. ‘A bust,’ Antonina says.

(b) (US campus) failure in one’s examinations; a hard examination.

1894		in Lucky Bag (US Naval Academy) 66: Bust [...] a failure. Bost (cold or frigid) [...] A bad or total failure [HDAS].
1900		E.H. Babbitt ‘College Words and Phrases’ in DN II:i 25: bust, n. A failure in recitation or examination.
1967–8		Baker et al. CUSS 92: Bust [...] Difficult exam.

(c) (also busting) a financial collapse.

1894		Truth (Sydney) 20 May 5/1: He knows more about what he is talking than fat Duncan Gillies who sailed in on the ‘boom’ and went out on the ‘bust’.
1902		C.L. Cullen More Ex-Tank Tales 116: I had $30 when the bust came.
1931		D. Runyon ‘Broadway Financier’ in Runyon on Broadway (1954) 213: Somebody suspects something illegal about the busting.
1948		(con. 1944) N. Mailer Naked and Dead 330: I been plannin’ for a bust ’cause we got an overexpanded economy.
1953		S. Bellow Augie March (1996) 106: The Commissioner died before the general bust.

(d) a demotion.

1918		G.E. Griffin Ballads of the Regiment 46: The system of ‘busts’ and promotions.
1927		(con. 1918) J. Stevens Mattock 248: Anyhow, you’re due for a bust. Sockin’ a sergeant with a bottle!
1952		J. Jones From Here to Eternity (1998) 5: What’s your wahine goin to say? when she finds out you took a bust to transfer?
1956		H.S. Thompson letter 25 Oct. in Proud Highway (1997) 20: Nothing worse than a bust could result from it.
1960, 1975		Wentworth & Flexner DAS.
1961		(con. early 1950s) J. Peacock Valhalla 502: ‘The stripes, the chevrons. I don’t want ’em any more. I’m takin’ an automatic bust.’ He turned and walked out.
1969		J. Crumley One to Count Cadence (1987) 129: Service policy had changed from the days when a dose was an automatic bust.

(e) (US tramp) a serious mistake; a piece of very bad luck.

1931

Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 43: bust. An error or bad ‘break.’.

(f) (US black gang) a coward, a weakling.

1991

L. Bing Do or Die (1992) 23: He’s a bust; he ain’t down for his hood.

(a) a burglary; 19C use only in UK but extended in Aus. use.

1865		Leaves from Diary of Celebrated Burglar 90/1: The ‘bust’ the previous night and the ‘snapping’ of Yellow Jemmy he was well acquainted with.
1887		J.W. Horsley Jottings from Jail 23: Fatty Bill, from City Road, rem for a bust ex 2 years.
1899		Newcastle Courant 18 Nov. 5/2: You never arst him not to ask me to go that other bust, did you?
1931		Sun (Sydney) 17 Aug. 7/6: At the police station Kinman said, ‘I’ll take what is coming to me as far as the ‘bust’ is concerned, but don’t go too hot on the gun stuff.’ Walker said, ‘I suppose I’ll get the ‘twist’ (indeterminate sentence) for this.’ .
1935		Thieves Slang ms list from District Police Training Centre, Ryton-on-Dunsmore, Warwicks 2: Bust: Breaking [sic].
1936		H. Corey Farewell, Mr Gangster! 279: Slang used by English criminals [...] Do a bust – burglary.
1939		J. Worby Spiv’s Progress 34: What about doing a bust, eh, Bonzo, are you game?
c.1950		K. Howard Small Time Crooks 65: The busts never got reported and only the guy that ran the store knew that Max Gallo had done it.
1968		J. Alard He who Shoots Last 35: Eyebrows O’Leary is doing a stretch over some out-of-town bust.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 35/1: bust 3 a burglary.

(b) (also bust-up) a police raid, esp. on drug-users or dealers.

1907		D. Stewart Shadows of the Night in Illus. Police News 7 Dec. 12/3: ‘There’ll be a bust now very soon, through that cursed [Inspector] Hicks’.
1938		New Yorker n.d. 48: One whiff [of marijuana] and we get a bust [W&F].
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 39: bust up A raid.
a.1955		‘King Heroin II’ in D. Wepman et al. Life (1976) 171: He’ll punch you, kick you, knock you in the dust, / ’Cause there’s nothing he likes better than a junkie bust.
1968		N. Heard Howard Street 24: An escape route for everybody [...] when the cops are out to make a bust.
1978		Observer Mag. 14 May 53: This is famous territory. The French Connection drug bust happened here.
1984		A. Sayle Train to Hell 77: How to cope with a drugs bust.
1998		G. Burn Happy Like Murderers 153: The noise at night and the falling around. The raids. The busts.
1999		R.G. Barrett Wind & Monkey (2013) [ebook] Now they’d have two cops hanging around for a piddly, square-up pot bust.
2000		Indep. Rev. 13 Jan. 1: Along which the fuzz must have charged en route to the bust.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 35/1: bust n. 1 a police raid.
2007		D. McDonald Luck in the Greater West (2008) 40: They’d tracked him down [...] and told him about the bust.
2010		K. Richards Life 210: The bust was a collusion between the News of the World and the cops.
2015		L. McInerney Glorious Heresies 9: All-Ireland finals, drug busts, general elections.
2019		D. Winslow Border [ebook] Cirello’s double life is about to end. With an enormous bust.
2020		D. Winslow ‘Broken’ in Broken 14: The night after the big bust [...] the cops repaired to Sweeney’s [bar].

(c) (orig. US) an arrest; a criminal charge.

1951		M. Spillane Long Wait (1954) 185: When the bust came Johnny ran to save her neck, not his own!
1965		C. Brown Manchild in the Promised Land (1969) 199: If there wasn’t so much time on a drug bust, I suppose a lot of other people would’ve gotten into it.
1977		E. Bunker Animal Factory 1: Two hundred kilos of marijuana and a kitchen table with forty ounces of cocaine was just too big a bust.
1989		C. Hiaasen Skin Tight 24: Wedged under a tiny headline between a one-ton coke bust and a double homicide.
1991		R.G. Barrett Between the Devlin 126: ‘It’d be a good bust for them [i.e. the police], Mick. They’d love that, on the news and everything’.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 182: For twelve cartons of cigarettes, a guy could take out a contract to have somebody set up on a drug bust.
2001		(con. 1964–8) J. Ellroy Cold Six Thousand 8: Pander beefs – 3/44 up [....] No busts outside Vegas and Dallas.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 35/1: bust 2 an arrest.
2014		M. McBride Swollen Red Sun 162: ‘[T]his here bust’ll make you a hero’.
2023		(con. 1962) J. Ellroy Enchanters 75: She used to rat pill pushers [...] to buy out of her own busts.

(d) (US black) by metonymy, the police.

1980

E. Folb Runnin’ Down Some Lines 66: Terms range from the more or less neutral designations like [...] the bust, the heat.

(e) (US prison) as ext. of sense 2d above, a prison sentence.

1967

in S. Harris Hellhole 229: Let’s suppose I’m in on a short bust. Let’s say I’m in for ninety days.

(a) (orig. US, also bust-up) a drinking party, a spree, a celebration.

1843		implied in on a bust
1848		Bartlett Dict. Americanisms 57: buster, or bust. A frolic, a spree. ‘They were on a buster, and were taken up by the police.’.
1853		N.Y. Times 28 Sept. 2: The Street-Boys [...] all have a slang language, so that they can recognize one another, and converse in a crowd. [...] To ‘tip a bust’ is to give a treat, and to ‘do a flat’ is to cheat a countryman.
1860		‘Californian Song’ in Bartlett Dict. Americanisms (1877) 86: And when we get our pockets full / Of his bright, shinin’ dust, / We’ll travel straight for home again, / And spend it on a bust.
1885		Bulletin (Sydney) 30 May 22/3: ‘[T]he little woman’ and he attendant sirens were lavishing their sweetest No. 1 smiles upon two sunburnt ‘Jackeroos’ from the Namoi, who were enjoying a fortnight’s ‘bust’ as a reward for having successfully pulled their selections through the inquiry for the company, by eclipsing the record of the historical Ananias.
1889		Kipling ‘Her Little Responsibility’ in Civil & Military Gaz. 19 Sept. (1909) 19: I might have got back after the first one, and been a prominent citizen, but the second bust settled matters.
1897		W.A. Sun. Times (Perth) 26 Dec. 6/5: Each man had glorious recollections of the last glorious bust on the fields.
1912		Bulletin (Sydney) 15 Aug. 15/4: The old diggers of the class ‘Tamumu’ describes, resent the Australians a heap, and scorn them as brutes who want to make money out of the game instead of being satisfied, like them, with a living and ’baccy and an occasional bust-up to celebrate striking a patch.
1913		J. London John Barleycorn (1989) 152: A wild band of revolutionists invited me as the guest of honor to a beer bust.
1914		Truth (Melbourne) 31 Jan. 11/2: A periodical ‘bust’ does a man no end of good, shakes his liver up, and he is all the better for it.
1920		Marvel 15 May 4: There’s no bill to pay. Have a regular bust-up while you’re about it. What about some more cherry pie?
1930		E. Waugh Vile Bodies 128: I’m going to come back to England and have a real old bust.
1944		Chicago Daily News 21 Oct. 4/1: You don’t exactly figure that a display of gold sequins and flesh-colored foundations at a Hollywood bust is exactly a contribution toward winning the war [DA].
1953		L. Uris Battle Cry (1964) 306: I’ve had him in camp for two weeks [...] I suppose he’s entitled to a bust.
1967		(con. 1920s) J. Thompson South of Heaven (1994) 110: Do you remember that big bust we went on in Dallas?
1997		P. Theroux Kowloon Tong 87: ‘Must celebrate properly’ was all he said, but Bunt knew what he meant: a bust, a blow-out, a knees-up, more.

(b) (US campus) an exciting, good experience or event.

1987

Eble Campus Sl. Fall 2: bust – happy, wonderful occurrence: That concert Saturday night was a bust.

(a) a blow, a punch [bust v.¹ (5b)].

1929		implied in take a bust at
1934		H. Roth Call It Sleep (1977) 268: Yea, an’ a bust onna beezer!
1946		Mezzrow & Wolfe Really the Blues 20: I got two dollars an hour, plus a bust in the jaw from the law every now and then.
1969		‘Iceberg Slim’ Mama Black Widow 184: I wish I had gotten a bloody nose or a bust in the mouth.
1981		J. Wambaugh Glitter Dome (1982) 16: Babycakes gives Daddy a bust in the mouth and a crack in the teeth.
1996		Penguin Bk of More Aus. Jokes 21: ‘Would you like a bust in the gob?’ she snarled. ‘Oh, you mind-reader, you!’ he smiled.

(b) (US black) an orgasm [bust v.¹ (7c)].

1965

W. King ‘The Game’ in King Black Short Story Anthol. (1972) 302: The stud is a maniac for broads [...] let them come, Mac’ll make them quicker than Speedy Gonzales. And they knock him out. I ain’t jiving. I mean he passes out after a bust. Out. O-U-T. Like Liston when Cassius hit him upside the head.