Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(orig. US) to identify; to check someone’s identification, e.g. to enter a club.

1945		in M. Chennault Up Sun! 120: ID’d a Jap airfield under construction at Q35 R36.
1970		G.F. Newman Sir, You Bastard 63: ‘What are you doing then?’ [...] ‘Having Mrs Well down to ID him.’.
1990		S. Morgan Homeboy 108: The cops [...] had yet to ID the mess scraped off the pavement.
1997		T. Winton Lockie Leonard, Legend (1998) 135: So we’ve ID’d the gurardian angel, I hear.
2004		E. Weiner Drop Dead, My Lovely (2005) 11: It would take a canvass of cab drop-offs and pickup locations [...] to I.D. the corpse.
2008		R. Price Lush Life 142: We need for you to come down to the house, help us try to ID these guys .
2009		P. Temple Truth 277: They kind of ID’d her in Darwin.
2012		M. McBride Frank Sinatra in a Blender [ebook] After we I.D. this limey ashole, let’s go get some breakfast.
2015		S. King Finders Keepers (2016) 76: If they had ID’d him.
2020		D. Winslow ‘The San Diego Zoo’ in Broken 136: ‘He can’t ID me! I was wearing a mask!’.
2007		R. Milward Apples (2023) 9: I was pretty nervous about getting IDed in the Empire.