chase v.
1. (US, also chase oneself) to run off, to leave.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | ‘Frisco Kid’s Story’ in High School Aegis X (15 Feb.) 2–4: Say, youze ain’t got nothin’ agin me, have yer, mister? Cos if yer has, I’ll chase meself off. | |
| Chimmie Fadden and Mr Paul 102: Duchess says we must chase; for if Whiskers cops us dere he’d jaw de heads off us for not knowing our places. | |
| Confessions of a Detective 199: He has a date wit’ you, but you’re too slow for his clock. So he chases; an’ leaves me planted to give you your orders. | |
| ‘Carmen’ in Gullible’s Travels 17: The vags chases down to the Loop to get the last home edition. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Plastic Age 175: You chase off with those rats if you want to, but you leave Carver with me if you know what’s good for you. |
2. (US tramp) to escort, to travel with.
| ‘And ’Frisco Kid Came Back’ in High School Aegis X (4 Nov.) 2–4: Dat old guy chases me home. | |
| ‘Chimmie Fadden Recognises...Some Old Friends’ 5 Feb. [synd. col.] If he wanted to chase along wit me he could. |
3. (US, also chase after, chase around, give someone the chase) used of any sexual pairing, to pursue or associate with sexually, esp. as an adulterer.
| Girl Proposition 32: All the swell Lookers are supposed to get out and chase the Woman-Hater. | |
| Goodwin’s Wkly (Salt Lake City, UT) 25 Dec. 5/2: People put the hooks in the chorus girls because they chase around with marrried men. | |
| Plastic Age 155: I admit that lots of the fellows are chasing around with rats on the sly, but lots of them aren’t, too. More fellows go straight around this college than you think. I know a number that have never touched a woman. | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Redheap (1965) 46: ‘Here’s me, on and off, chasin’ Maggie Trimble for a year; no more hope of gettin’ it than flyin’’ . | |
| Redheap (1965) 103: ‘If I had a little woman like Mrs. Arnold waiting at home for me I wouldn’t go chasing round after other fellows’ sister, I wouldn’t’ [...] ‘Top of that, he chases after any girl he has a fancy to’. | |
| Gangster Girl 26: From tipsy teamsters to the top shots of Chicago’s underworld, they had given her the chase and the work. | |
 | N.Y. Amsterdam Star-News 9 Feb. 13: She’s waiting right now [to] start chasing round again. | |
| Crazy Kill 48: I just figured he was out chasing. | |
| Maybe I’ll Pitch Forever 64: What I didn’t know was that if you kept chasing, you were bound to trip sometime. | |
| Of Minnie the Moocher and Me 54: I chased all the broads in the show. | |
| Fort Apache, The Bronx 314: When he was working on a case as complicated as this he didn’t chase around. | |
| ‘Senior Citizen Caine’ Minder [TV script] 28: This is no time to be chasing the other. | |
| Share House Blues 9: He goes out, quite openly, chasing women. | |
| (con. early 1950s) L.A. Confidential 139: Billy know you chase stuff behind his back? | |
| Dirty Cockney Rhy. Sl. 27: My old Boris Becker has been chasing skirt. |
4. (US) to move, to walk.
| Shorty McCabe 45: When we’d rubbed down [...] we chases back and organizes ourselves into a board of inquiry. |
5. (US) to tell someone to go away.
| et al. DAUL 42/2: Chase. To order an undesirable person to keep his distance. | |
| Mad mag. Apr.–May 5: Please! Please don’t chase me, please! I got a present for you! |
6. to follow one drink or drug with another.
| Big Bill’s Blues 102: We [...] took a drink of our whisky and chased it with Gordon Gin. | |
| Stand (1990) 42: He could remember snorting coke and chasing it with tequila. | |
| Blood on the Moon 219: Lloyd chased three Benzedrine tablets with sink water. | |
| (con. 1964-65) Sex and Thugs and Rock ’n’ Roll 5: Throwing back another shot of Cutty and chasing it with a pony of beer. |
7. (US) in drug contexts [chase the dragon v. (1); senses 5b and 5c misuses].
(a) to smoke heroin.
| Corner (1998) 23: A makeshift nightstand on a milk crate, where Fran can chase her lines if the basement is otherwise occupied. | |
| Grits 231: Don’t yew chase moren arf in-a go, like. | |
| West Sussex Drug and Alcohol Action Team 🌐 Who uses heroin? Most but not all new young heroin users are ‘socially excluded’. Most begin by smoking or ‘chasing’ heroin. | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | (con. 1980s) Skagboys 82: Jist chasin it like, widnae go near needles! | |
| Straight Dope [ebook] [T]ilt the foil more, so it comes toward you, you don’t really ‘chase’ it’. |
(b) to smoke cocaine.
| ONDCP Street Terms 5: Chase — To smoke cocaine. |
(c) to smoke marijuana.
| ONDCP Street Terms 5: Chase — To smoke [...] marijuana. |
(d) (Aus.) to be looking for drugs.
| Dead Point (2008) [ebook] He sees you’re chasin and he meets you at the Vic Market. Keeps his stash there. | |
| Rubdown [ebook] ‘Chasin’?’ He had a face like a rat. A rat with a really nasty cold sore. ‘No thanks’. |
In phrases
(US) to be ejected, to be chased away.
| Tales of the Ex-Tanks 164: Getting the chase from kinky-headed hash-slingers. |
In exclamations
an excl. of aggressive dismissal.
| Louisiana Democrat (Alexandria, LA) 14 Feb. 1/6: ‘Well, fur charity’s sake!’ yelled the youth from Yale. ‘When’d you blow in?’ He retorted with epigrammatic brilliancy, ‘Ah, go chase ourself around your feet’. | |
| Princeton Union (MN) 22 June 1/4: You won’t? Well, then, go chase yourself! Begone! | |
| in N.Y. Journal 25 Oct. in Stallman (1966) 164: Youse go chase yerself. | |
| Sister Carrie 60: He really expected to hear the common, ‘Aw! Go chase yourself!’ in return. | |
| Skidoo! 67: Aw, chase yerself! | |
| Valley of the Moon (1914) 354: ‘Aw, chase yourself,’ Billy advised. ‘I ain’t a vag. I’m a workingman.’. | |
| ‘The Kid’ in Songs of a Sentimental Bloke 104: ‘You go an’ chase yerself!’ she tips me straight. / ‘Ther’s nothin’ now fer you to do but – wait.’. | |
| Shorty McCabe on the Job 85: I might have got real peevish over Mr. Bayne’s suspicions, and told him to go chase himself. | |
| Psmith Journalist (1993) 216: Youse can’t butt in dere [...] Chase yerself. | |
| Truth (Melbourne) 12 Aug. 5/3: Mr. Rice (for the defendant): Didn't you tell Mrs. Sims to ‘Go and have a roll’? His Honor (puzzled); What does that mean? Mr. Rice: It has no dirty meaning. His Honor (reassured): Oh, that’s all right. Mr. Rice: It means ‘GO AND CHASE YOURSELF’. | |
| Dundee Courier 13 Oct. 4/2: They say money talks [...] To the poor man it says, ‘Go chase yourself’. | |
| ‘Fly Paper’ Story Omnibus (1966) 36: You haven’t even got guts enough to tell this guy to go chase himself. | |
| ‘University of Missouri Sl.’ in AS VI:3 204: go chase yourself: go away and quit bothering. | |
| ‘Tabusse and the Powers’ (trans. John Rodker) in Lehmann Penguin New Writing No. 6 16: ‘The Deputy,’ said Tabusse, ‘Let him chase himself. The devil he matters to me!’. | |
| Jennings Goes To School 34: You can go and chase yourself, Temple. | |
| Viper 119: If you asked me instead I’d probably tell you to go chase. | |
| [synd. col.] 22 Jan. ‘Chase yourself, I got no time for pressing charges’ he yelled at Walsh. | |
| Dict. of Invective (1991) 352: go shit in your hat (and pull it down over your ears), to. To go chase yourself, only more so; a most emphatic rejection. | |
| ‘Attack’ 🎵 Run away, run away, I’ll attack / Run away, run away, go chase yourself. |
SE in slang uses
In phrases
(Aus.) to curry favour with the masses; thus cheer-chaser, a toady to popular opinion or a statement designed to gain popular acclaim; cheer-chasing, taking a deliberately populist stand.
| West Australian (Perth) 30 Nov. 2/8: A man who is a cheer-chaser should have no place in Labour leadership. | |
| Kalgoorlie Miner (WA) 12 Dec. : That’s an other of your cheer-chasers. You weren’t game to fight for your country in the last war; squibbing it every time; just a cheer-chaser, just a squib. | |
| Age (Melbourne) 14 Dec. 2/4: ‘Cheer chasing methods, adopted by the Minister of - Labor (Mr. Ward) are no preventive of absenteeism at war factories,’ said the Deputy Leader of the Opposition. | |
| Sydney Morn. Herald 19 Aug. 4/5: Mr. Chifley has stuck to the affairs of his own Department [...] neither chasing cheers nor grousing at criticism. | |
| Sth Coast Times (NSW) 13 NOV. 5: We have ‘had’ Liberal glamour boys and cheer chasers, who have talked in millions and played for peanuts. | |
| Newcastle Morn. Herald (NSW) 19 Mar. 2/3: Mr. Bevan Chases Cheers [...] It is undeniable that the group [i.e. Labour] enjoys an appreciable share of public support. Its cheer-chasing appeal helps to ensure that. | |
| Canberra Times (ACT) 22 Jan. 2/1: [...] is the cheer-chasing policy relentlessly pursued by the Government of New South Wales. |
see under bag n.1
see under can n.1
(Aus.) to prospect for gold.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 13 Oct. 14/3: It [Louisville] was named after Louis Hanniker; here Madam supplied some of the grog, while Louis chased the nimble weight before he struck a better thing on the nickel fields of New Caledonia. | |
| My Life’s Adventure 76: Prospectin’ is a rotten life [...] I expect I’ll be all my life chasin’ the weight. | |
| One Wet Season 72: And the talk inevitably turned to gold. ‘Ah!’ sighed Womba. ‘I too chased the pennyweight in the days when I had my Ena.’. | |
| Gold in Blood 175: They were all prospectors who had spent their lives ‘chasing the pennyweight.’. | |
| in Ammon Working Lives 190: He was an interesting old man and had chased the weight for over forty years. |
(Aus.) to live as a tramp.
| Bulletin (Sydney) 5 Oct. 24/4: Tell me a profession with more aliases than the swagman’s? Here are a few: ‘Waltzin’ Matilda’ [...] ‘humpin’ the bluey’, [...] ‘chasin’ the sunset’. | |
| Aus. Lang. 104: Expressions to describe being on the tramp are varied and colourful. Here are some of the best of them: on the wallaby, on the track, on the wallaby track, on the sunshine track, to swag it, chase the sun, coast about, [...]. | |
| I Travelled a Lonely Land (1957) 231/2: chase the sun – go on the tramp. |
see under cow n.1
In exclamations
a flirting challenge by a young woman to a young man.
| Lancs. Eve. Post 19 Nov. 3/4: Prosecutrix added that she was talking to prisoner, who was of a jealous disposition [...] and made use of the words ‘O chase me,’ followed by a laugh. | |
| Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 185/1: O chase me (Streets, 1898 on). Satiric invitation, or pretended satiric, by a maiden to a youth to run after her and hug and kiss her. |