Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. the vagina.

1842		‘The Swell Coves Alphabet’ in Nobby Songster 27: K. stands for Kinchins, and kifer hung with hair.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.

2. sexual intercourse; women regarded as sex objects; thus kyfer-mashing, pursuing women; bit of kyfer, a woman, a ‘bit of skirt’.

1883		‘Three Chums’ in Boudoir III 88: Mean fellows, who can’t afford a proper bit of kyfer.
1890–1904		Farmer & Henley Sl. and Its Analogues.
c.1900		‘Ramrod’ Family Connections 13: Your Mamma likes a bit of skin [...] she has a good appetite for kipher.
1934		B. Appel Brain Guy (1937) 123: They knock off a lil jack, mebbe a kife helps ’em out, they got free tail, and I ain’t much better.
1943		‘Henry Green’ Caught (2001) 160: Why, kypher, skirt.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 117/1: Kife, n. 1. (Pl.) Prostitutes; loose women. 2. (P) Passive pederasts; male oral sodomists.
1963		C. Wood ‘Spare’ in Cockade (1965) I i: Can’t you get your mind off kyfer?
1971		(con. WWII) B. Aldiss Soldier Erect 232: If there was any kyfer on this mountain, you’d smell it out first, Di.
1988		(ref. to 1930s) S. Humphries Secret World of Sex 40: John Binns remembers [...] If you boasted that you’d made love to a girl [...] you’d say ‘I had a bit of kife there.’ If you’d felt a girl’s breasts you’d say ‘I had a good reef.’ And if you’d felt her down below you’d say ‘I got a handful of sprats’.
2013		(ref. to 1951)Baffler 23 🌐 Disciplined by club owners, he replaced the poster with a sign that substituted a less well-known, but still readily recognizable, piece of synonymous army slang: ‘Saturday for KIFE’.

3. (US) a crooked lawyer.

1992

(con. 1955) Randolph & Legman Ozark Folksongs and Folklore I 353: From Mr. H.F., Kansas City, Missouri, January, 1955. He heard it in the early 1900s. In stanza 1:3, kifer, criminal slang for a shyster [...] ‘When my Lulu was put in prison / When my Lulu was thrown in jail, / Not one of those damned two-bit kifers / Would go on my Lulu’s bail’.