Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(Aus.) very depressed.

1965		J. Dyer ‘Captain Blood’ 39: We were as flat as a tack when we met South in the Grand Final and they romped away with the flag.
1983		Sydney Morning Herald 13 June 25: ‘I rode her in the Brisbane Cup and she went disgracefully,’ Quinton said. ‘She was as flat as a tack after the hard run.’ [GAW4].
2002		Herald-Sun 26 Sept. (Victoria, Aus.) 🌐 ‘I was as flat as a tack after the draw,’ Cowton said. ‘The whole season build-up was to that last Saturday in September. All of a sudden there’s another game, and I couldn’t get my mind around it. I was going through the motions.’.

(US) without any money.

1946

E. Wilson PIkes Peek or Bust 233: Well, the day we opened [the tavern], I had forty cents in my pocket, and when I got to the door, I threw it clean across the street. I wanted to go in flatpocket and start in clean .

see separate entries.

see under bit n.¹

(drugs) LSD.

1971		E.E. Landy Underground Dict. (1972).
1977		L. Young et al. Recreational Drugs.
2001		ONDCP Street Terms 9: Flat blues — LSD.

see separate entry.

(US tramp) a pancake.

1927		C. Samolar ‘Argot of the Vagabond’ in AS II:9 389: Pancakes are flat-cars.
1936		Mencken Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: Pancakes are flat-cars.

(US) an itinerant who travels in freight-cars.

1899–1900

C.L. Cullen Tales of the Ex-Tanks 133: I had a pretty good front for a flat car tourist.

stewed tripe.

1909

J. Ware Passing Eng. of the Victorian Era.

see separate entries.

(US prison) bologna sausage.

1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 799: flat dog – Bologna sausage.
1971–2		C. Shafer ‘Catheads [...] and Cho-Cho Sticks’ in Abernethy Bounty of Texas (1990) 204: flat dog, n. – bologna.

see separate entries.

see separate entries.

see separate entries.

see flatfoot n. (3)

(US Und.) a crooked gambling game or casino; orig. fair/carnival use, when a flat was a crooked or doctored ‘wheel of fortune’; also as v.

1895		S.F. Chron. 6 June 11/5: Youse see a banker — de old man — stakes me wid a flat joint one day [...] an’ I goes to Petaluma to cop a few bones. Dead easy graft, but he sends a bull con along to guard his dough.
1904		Des Moines Register (IA) 19 Oct. 4/2: [headline] Gambling Charge Against George Collins Awaiting Detention of Man Fleeced in ‘Flat Joint’ .
1912		Chicago Civil Service Commission 10: There is, and has been for years a [...] gang of ‘flat-joint’ operators making this city their headquarters. A ‘flat joint,’ in the words of an eminent operator who makes Chicago his home, is not a gambling device, for the simple reason that the ‘sucker’ never wins.
1914		Jackson & Hellyer Vocab. Criminal Sl. 34: flat joint [...] Current amongst open-air sure-thing men who operate at circus gatherings, fairs, carnivals, any gaming establishment where fortune is presumed to wait upon skill combined with risk. The ‘tivoli’; the ‘swinging ball’, the ‘spindle’; the ‘pinch wheel’; the ‘paddles’; the ‘shells’; ‘three card monte’; the ‘eight die case’; the ‘fish pond’; the ‘discs’ are all grafting flat joints.
1922		El Paso Herald (TX) 18 July 13/6: The circus grafters are the shell and wheel men, flat-joint and broad workers, stalls and dips.
1935		A.J. Pollock Und. Speaks 40/2: Flat joint, a cheating gambling house.
1940		D. Maurer Big Con 144: Joe Frog [...] was fascinated by the flat-joints with a circus. [Ibid.] 175: Farmer boys thought that flat-jointing was better than looking at a horse’s tail all day.
1952		in Lethbridge (Alberta) Herald 22 Mar. 14/4: Many of the touts around race tracks are former carnival hustlers or carnies whose gambling concessions were known as flat-joints.
1956		H. Gold Man Who Was Not With It (1965) 305: Don’t fit no place but the funhouse, the flat joint, racked up front of the marks.
2012		W. Keyser ‘Carny Lingo’ in http://goodmagic.com 🌐 Flat Store or Flat Joint — A game at which the agent has total control over winning or losing. Usually a game at which money is the prize rather than goods. So called because the [...] rig [...] played there, once set vertically for all to see, is now set flat horizontally so that only the player and the agent can see it.

see separate entry.

(orig. UK Und.) any plan – criminal or otherwise – that fails.

1812

Vaux Vocab. of the Flash Lang.

(Aus./N.Z.) at top speed, at the limit of one’s abilities or resources.

1988		McGill Dict. of Kiwi Sl. 45/2: flat stick as fast as the vehicle will travel; eg ‘He was going flat stick, but the cop was gaining on him.’ [...] flat tack as fast as you can get yourself or your vehicle to go.
1999		Greenstone Reincarnate at www.airandangels.com 🌐 People who wonder how Usagi can stay so thin, given how she eats, need only look at how much time she spends running flat tack to somewhere she should have been fifteen minutes ago.
2003		McGill Reed Dict. of N.Z. Sl. 79: flat stack/stick/strap/tack As fast as possible or maximum exertion. ANZ latter C20.

see flat bit under bit n.¹

1. a style of haircut.

1952		Kansas City Times 27 Feb. 26/2: [headline] Barbers Dread Flat Tops [...] Those flat top haircuts demanded by youths these days are an abomination to barbers.
1954		N.Y. Herald Trib. 28 Feb. 47/3: School athletes [...] probably have ‘flat tops’ (crew haircuts).
1956		Little Richard ‘Ready Teddy’ 🎵 The flat top cats and the dungaree dolls / Are headed for the gym to the sock-hop ball.
1963		J. Rechy City of Night 180: The young high school delinquents with flattops proclaiming their Youth.
1978		R. Price Ladies’ Man (1985) 243: I noticed a chunky guy dressed in leather with a blond Nazi flat-top.
1983		V. Viidikas ‘Island of Gems’ in India Ink (1984) 42: A loud palm tree waving shirt, and a flat top haircut.
1990		N. George ‘Superfly’ in Buppies, B-Boys, Baps and Bohos (1994) 119: At [...] Afrocentric barbershops the fade flattop became a sculpture.
2002		(con. 1991) W. Self Dorian 197: He had a flat-top in the current Tyson mode.
2020		S.A. Crosby Blacktop Wasteland 27: His iron gray flattop contrasted with his coal black skin.

2. (US) one who sports such a haircut, by ext. a law-abiding (poss. stupid) individual.

2013

J. Stahl Happy Mutant Baby Pills 23: The other end of the leash was in the hands of some [...] flattop in a DEA T-shirt and reflector shades.

3. a style of hat.

1961

C. Cooper Jr Weed (1998) 177: His eyes widening [...] under the short brim of his flat-top.

1. (US campus) an unattractive young woman.

1925		Wash. Post 25 Jan. SM7: Jargon of the Juveniles Daughter Flat tire.
1926		Maines & Grant Wise-crack Dict. 8/2: Flat-tire – Girl never to be taken to a blow-out.
1996		Eble Sl. and Sociability 16: However, loss of referent cannot explain the demise of these American college slang terms of the 1930s and 1940s: flat tire for ‘unattractive girl’.

2. (US) a woman who has been thrown over by a lover; a prostitute who has been rejected by her pimp.

1931

Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl. 75: Flat Tyre.–A woman cast aside by her lover of yesterday or abandoned by the ‘pimp’ who has exploited her as unproductive of any further income.

3. (orig. US black) a disappointment, an illusion.

1963		in T.I. Rubin Sweet Daddy 14: Take the marriage bit. That’s the biggest flat tire of all.
2000		(con. 1940s–60s) Décharné Straight from the Fridge Dad 60: Flat tyre 1. A letdown.

4. (US) a failure, an inadequate.

1926		Wood & Goddard Dict. Amer. Sl. 15: dub. A mutt, a dud, a flat tire, a poor fish.
1929		T. Thursday ‘And Howe’ in Everybody’s Feb. 🌐 Ain’t I read hundreds of fiction stories where the blowhard turned out to be a flat tire.
1933		The Public Enemy [film script] Couple of lightweights . . . yeah, flat tyres.
1938		Eve. Post (Wellington) 25 Jan. 8/8: Modern Americanisms [...] an unsociable companion maye be a ‘flat tyre’.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 799: flat tire–A person unproductive of further income.

5. (US) an impotent man.

1931		Irwin Amer. Tramp and Und. Sl.
1962		Ragen & Finston World’s Toughest Prison 799: flat tire [...] an impotent man.

6. (US) a kill-joy.

1930

E. Glyn Flirt and Flapper 75: Flirt: My sympathy is all with the poor young father. Flapper: Oh, Great-Grandma, you’re a regular flat tyre.

(US prison) to lose a fight badly.

2006

Prison Slang Mommyblogger mydogharriet.blogspot.com 2 Mar. 🌐 Catch a square and get ready to re-claim your clavo because this asshole’s about to get flat-weeded.

see separate entries.

(US prison) to knock down violently.

2000

Other Side of the Wall: Prisoner’s Dict. July 🌐 Flat Wig: To slam, or put to the floor with force. Or, ‘Flat Weed.’ (TX).

(Aus.) used in various fig. senses of ‘flat’, depressing, uninspiring, disappointing .

1996

J. Byrell Lairs, Urgers & Coat-Tuggers 147: And the rest of the arvo was as flat as a ballerina’s tits when it came to faves.

(Aus.) of beer, very flat.

1970

Galton & Simpson ‘Cuckoo in the Nest’ Steptoe and Son [TV script] They reckon your beer is flatter than a witch’s tit.

(US) out of work, without money.

1923		P. MacGill Moleskin Joe 51: ‘Flat on the dead-end,’ was the man’s answer, ‘’Aven’t seen bread for two days.’.
1948		H. McCoy Kiss Tomorrow Goodbye in Four Novels (1983) 109: For a punk who’s flat on his can you sure talk big.
1959		W. Burroughs Naked Lunch (1968) 50: There I was flat on my ass with no certificate.
2000		(con. 1940s–60s) Décharné Straight from the Fridge Dad 60: Flat on one’s can Down on your luck.