Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) deer that has been illegally shot by poachers.

1967

in DARE.

(US prison) a blue prison uniform, worn in a county jail.

1993		Dr Dre ‘Bitches Ain’t Shit’ 🎵 Your girl was trickin’ while you was draped in your county blues.
2000		Sth Florida Sun Sentinel (Ft Lauderdale, FL) 29 June Lifestyle 82/3: Folks [...] get released with their prison gear on, so they kep it. Folks in L.A, have been wearing county blues for a long, long time.
2011		W. Henderson City of Nightmares pt 2 1: Hospital clothes. A green short sleeve pyjamas like shirt, tan pants something like County blues.

a rough haircut, shorn to equal length all round the scalp.

1839		Birmingham Jrnl 17 Aug. 6/4: They are then taken to the bathroom, where the county barber crops their hair quite close [...] they have thus received a county crop.
1841		Bell’s New Wkly Messenger (London) 12 Dec. 5/3: Mott had only recently been discharged from prison, which was evident from the ‘county crop’ of his hair.
1853		Windsor & Eton Exp. 28 May 1/6: It was evident from his ‘county crop’ that he had lately been inmate of of of His Majesty’s gaols.
1860		Hotten Dict. of Modern Sl. etc. (2nd edn) 122: County-crop (i.e., county-prison crop), hair cut close and round, as if guided by a basin ? an indication of having been in prison.
1873		Sl. Dict.
1882		Dundee Courier (Scot.) 4 Aug. 7/4: They [i.e. the gaolers] did not give me ther ‘county crop’.
1909		J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era 95/1: County-crop (1856). A closely-cropped head of hair, such as is imposed upon prisoners sent to the county jails. In 1856 when the Crimean soldiers returned with long heavy beards [...] it was found that longish hair, such as had been worn all the century, gave with the heavy beard too top-heavy an appearance. The hair was therefore cut down, and the result was dubbed a county crop, while the beard was called a doormat, shortened to mat. ‘He’s got a crop and mat’ quite described the swell of 1856–1857.

(US) a county jail.

1860		Nashville Union (TX) 8 Nov. 3/5: Each was bound over in the sum of 5,000 — in default of which they werew removed to the county hotel.
1870		Lawrence Dly Jrnl (KS) 31 Mar. 3/2: Policeman Herrington [...] persuaded Johnson to accompany him to the jail, to be introduced [...] to the hospitalities of our popular county hotel keeper, Sherif Walker.
1880		St Paul Globe (MO) 13 Jan. 3/1: McBride was sent back to the quarters at Col. Thompson’s county hotel he had just left, for stealing.
1890		Green Bay Press-Gaz. 17 Jan. 3/5: [He] was sent up to the county hotel for sixty days.
1902		Arizona Sentinel 8 Jan. 3/1: Peter Burke, the wide-awake constable at Kofa, came in Monday, and as usual brought a boarder for the ‘county hotel’.
1911		Dispatch (Lexington, NC) 7 June 6/3: A sewing machine agent who fell into the hands of the law and was boarding at Alexander county hotel, was transferred to the Iredell county hotel [and] did depart from the last named hotel and forgot to notify the landlord [...] Anyone knowing his whereabouts will be thanked to drop a card to the Sheriff.
1922		Lawrence Dly World-Jrnl (KS) 28 Mar. 3/5: A term in the county jail may punish a man for having written bad checks but it will not cure him of the habit [...] M.E. Miller, who last week was released from the county ‘hotel’ [etc].
1931		Kingston Dly Freeman (NY) 17 Apr. 13/7: The number of guests registering with Sheriff Smith at the county hotel is rapidly growing less.
1936		Belleville Telescope (KS) 23 Jan. 1/5: Stop-over at ‘County Hotel’. Shefiff Andy Moore says he had a South Dakota ‘guest’ at his ‘county hotel’ Friday night.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 50/2: County, the. A county jail or workhouse ; often a prison farm or poor farm in rural areas.
1965–70		in DARE.
1992		Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 3: County Hotel A county jail or workhouse.

1. (US) a local (rather than state) police officer.

1973		Dly Reporter (Grfeenfield, IN) 15 Mar. 4/4: Deputy Sheriff Jim Wells, known as the County Mountie.
1975		National Lampoon Nov. 52: We gotta county mounty up ahead checkin’ out a hippie van.
1980		Eble Campus Sl. Spring 2: county-mounty – sheriff.
1998		Land Line Mag. Dec. 🌐 Dorwin later said, ‘The CHPs should have known the law and pulled the “county mountie” off.’.
2003		G. Schmalz at birdingadventuresinc.com 🌐 Here comes the cops back again, Yay! followed shortly by the County Mountie.
2011		F. Bill ‘Coon Hunter’s Noir’ in Crimes in Southern Indiana [ebook] Marty [...] is Mauckport’s town marshal. Not a town clown or county mountie.

2. any police officer.

1996

K. Lette Mad Cows 234: Some people get all the breaks — County Mounties behind and the Pooh Decapitator in front.