Green’s Dictionary of Slang

packet n.

[SE packet, a bundle of letters; thus lit. a ‘packet of lies’]

1. a false report; thus sell one a packet v., to hoax, to deceive, to lie.

[UK]Grose Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[UK]Lex. Balatronicum.
[UK]Egan Grose’s Classical Dict. of the Vulgar Tongue.
[US]Matsell Vocabulum.
[UK]Hotten Sl. Dict.
[UK]Sl. Dict.

2. (orig. milit.) a bullet or missile; see cop a packet

3. (also pack, package) a large sum of money; esp. in make/win a packet v.

[UK]‘Doss Chiderdoss’ ‘Old, But New’ Sporting Times 6 Mar. 1/2: ‘You’ve some banknotes on you, I perceive, and for your good I’ll buy / What you need most, if you’ll hand them o’er to me.’ And her wisdom so impressed him that he passed to her the pack.
[UK]M. Arlen Piracy (1932) 157: The ‘dicers’ stayed at home that evening – Tarlyon and Cypress had both won a packet at chemin de fer the night before.
[UK]E. Waugh Vile Bodies 189: I’ve got the nice little packet of thirty-five thou. waiting.
[UK]G. Greene Brighton Rock (1943) 71: The odds have shortened. There’s been a packet laid on Black Boy this week.
[US]D. Runyon Runyon à la Carte 45: We can drop her in a stake race at Churchill Downs and win a package.
[UK]S. Jackson An Indiscreet Guide to Soho 115: You drop a hint about having won a packet.
[Aus]Cusack & James Come in Spinner (1960) 314: There was a packet to be made out of liquor for a hell of a long time yet.
[UK]‘Raymond Thorp’ Viper 76: Snow was worth a packet.
[US]R. Prather Scrambled Yeggs 73: Once in a while he makes a package, but mostly he drops it.
[UK](con. c.1928) D. Holman-Hunt My Grandmothers and I (1987) 161: This ’ere trunk’s worth a packet!
[UK]P. Theroux Family Arsenal 165: ‘I won the pools.’ [...] ‘I hope it was a bundle.’ ‘A packet – well, enough anyway.’.
[UK]R. Dahl Rhyme Stew (1990) 35: I want ski-trousers and a jacket! / I don’t care if it costs a packet!
[Aus]R.G. Barratt ‘McCullough to Cut the Deadwood’ in What Do You Reckon (1997) [ebook] [S]he writes books normal people can understand and enjoy, and makes a packet while she’s at it.
[UK]Observer Cash 3 Oct. 2: Help your bundle of joy to make a packet.
[Aus]M.B. ‘Chopper’ Read Chopper 4 157: We had put a packet on Turfcutter to win, and the bloody thing came in third.

4. trouble.

[UK]J. Curtis Gilt Kid 195: Nothing ain’t gone right, not since I come out of stir. Got another packet I did. Fourteen days in Pentonville.
[UK]H.E. Bates Darling Buds of May (1985) 75: Somebody’s at it. Somebody’s catching a packet.

5. (usu. gay) the genitals, male or female.

[UK]J. Gielgud letter 5 Aug. in Mangan John Gielgud’s Letters (2004) 235: The S.M. [...] wears skin tight Sun Tans with an enormous packet!
[US]B. Rodgers Queens’ Vernacular.
[US]Maledicta VI:1+2 (Summer/Winter) 131: Box (vagina [...] but more often in the sense of U.S. gay term basket, U.K. packet).
[Scot]I. Welsh Filth 78: She finds oot [...] who the guys wi the really big packets are and she’ll only fuck them.
[UK]J. Poller Reach 106: Nice packet.
[UK]P. Baker Fabulosa 296/1: packet a man’s crotch .
[UK]J. Meades Empty Wigs (t/s) 168: [A] bulky packet in the gentleman area.

6. constr. with the, everything, the lot.

[UK]J. Cameron It Was An Accident 84: Windscreen rear window tyres the packet.

7. (US prison) a long sentence.

[US]Bentley & Corbett Prison Sl. 28: Long also Longtimer An inmate with many years to serve. Although a prison sentence of 10 years or more is generally considered to be long, it is more frequently associated with prison sentences of 25 years to life. (Archaic: bundle, chunk, package).

In phrases

cop a packet (v.) (also catch a packet, get..., have..., stop...) [cop v. (3a); Brophy & Partridge, Songs and Slang of the British Soldier (1930), suggest the ‘packet’ of gauze and lint that comprised the First Field Dressing that would be applied to a wound]

1. to be killed or wounded, to get into trouble.

[Can]R. Service ‘Bill’s Grave’ in Rhymes of a Red Cross Man 82: Bill copped a packet proper, and took ’is departure West.
[UK]W. Muir Observations of Orderly 222: I could see he knew I’d clicked a packet, square dinkum, this trip.
[UK]N&Q 12 Ser. IX 347: Packet. Wound. ‘So-and-so has caught a packet.’ [Ibid.] 348: Stopped one. Received a wound.
[UK](con. WWI) Fraser & Gibbons Soldier and Sailor Words 272: Stop A Packet, To: To be hit by a bullet: wounded: killed.
[UK](con. WW1) P. MacDonald Patrol 31: ‘Thought you was a Buddoo, Sergeant. You nearly caught a packet’ [Ibid.] 71: [N]ot that his coppin’ that packet was through me, exact.
[UK](con. 1914–18) Brophy & Partridge Songs and Sl. of the British Soldier.
[UK]Partridge DSUE (1984) 1160/1: stop a packet [...] from 1915.
[US]Sikeston Herald (MO) 26 Dec. 7/7: Packet (buy a) – To be badly bombed.
[UK]R. Llewellyn None But the Lonely Heart 35: It looked as if the old bird was going to cop a packet.
[US]P. Kendall Dict. Service Sl. n.p.: Shot [...] he got a packet.
[UK]G. Gibson Enemy Coast Ahead (1955) 67: His pilot [...] flew right over the battleship and got a packet for his pains.
[Ire]L.O’Flaherty Insurrection 197: ‘Hey! Where do you think you’re going?’ cried a soldier as she entered the alley-way. ‘You might get a packet in the napper down there.’.
[UK]H. Ainley In Order to Die 111: [O]ne man’s glory inevitably meant somebody else stopping a packet.
[UK]G.W. Target Teachers (1962) 91: The Old Man watched them in ... and then Dusty’s lot, copped just as big a packet by the look of it.
[UK](con. WWII) B. Aldiss Soldier Erect 262: ‘Old Geordie got a packet.’ [...] ‘Right in the fucking guts.’.

2. to suffer a dose of venereal disease.

[UK]Partridge DSUE (8th edn) 846.2: mid-C20.

3. to gain a great deal, poss. more than one bargained for; this can either be good (more money than expected) or bad (a longer prison sentence than feared).

[UK]P. Tempest Lag’s Lex. 52: copped a packet. Given a sentence of preventive detention.
cost a packet (v.)

to cost a great deal; thus joc. Costa Packet, any tourist resort in Spain popular with British working classes.

[UK]W.S. Maugham Bread-Winner in Plays (1932) 239: Charles. It cost me a packet Alfred. And you’re not the only one.
[Aus]‘Nino Culotta’ They’re a Weird Mob (1958) 177: Cost y’a packet.
[NZ]N. Hilliard Maori Girl 228: It’ll cost him a packet to get an old place like this done up.
[UK]C. Dexter Last Seen Wearing in Second Morse Omnibus (1994) 361: The whole thing must have cost the Local Authority a real packet.
[UK]P. Theroux Family Arsenal 118: Three weeks on the Costa Packet.
[UK]D. Mitchell Black Swan Green 148: These beauts’d’ve cost a packet.
drop a packet (v.)

to give birth.

[UK]L. Ortzen Down Donkey Row 176: Then the missus’s time comes on. She’s ready ter drop a packet any minnit nah.

In exclamations