Green’s Dictionary of Slang

1. (also line) a police identification parade.

1907		J. London Road 89: Then came the line-up, forty or fifty of us, naked as Kipling’s heroes [DA].
1915		G. Bronson-Howard God’s Man 129: I’m in the line-up.
1928		J. Callahan Man’s Grim Justice 185: They put me in the line-up and rehearsed my history to the masked detectives.
1931		P.J. Wolfson Bodies are Dust (2019) [ebook] [S]he is in the line-up when we raid a house.
1939		K. Tennant Foveaux 252: The police have to let him go. They can’t refuse to take the money but they tell him to be back in a couple of hours for the line up.
1941		V. Davis Phenomena in Crime 63: The men on the dais are unable to see [...] the detectives watching the ‘line-up’.
1947		I. Shulman Amboy Dukes 110: Book him [...] and take him over to the line-up.
1950		I. Hamilton pre-pub. extract from Till Human Voices Wake Us 14: I saw him standing near me in the line-up for counting and searching.
1953		W.P. McGivern Big Heat 152: The doc wouldn’t be able to pick that man out of a line.
1955		E. Hunter ‘First Offense’ in Jungle Kids (1967) 8: ‘Where we going?’ ‘The line-up, kid [...] This your first offense?’.
1965		L. Bruce How to Talk Dirty 136: Unless you should identify me at some line-up you might be participating in.
1975		E. Torres Carlito’s Way 19: No lineup, no reading of rights.
1981		G.V. Higgins Rat on Fire (1982) 130: Folks [...] who know Alfred and could pick him out of a two-hundred-man line-up.
1986		C. Stroud Close Pursuit (1988) 167: Sorvino wants him to do a lineup with those Angel assholes.
1994		N. McCall Makes Me Wanna Holler (1995) 81: We were all [...] placed in a police lineup.
1999		D. Looser ‘Boob Jargon’ in NZEJ 13 33: line up n. A line of inmates in ordered positions for meals or a head-count.
2000		J. Ellroy ‘Grave Doubt’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 85: They ran lineups. The heist vics ID’d Graham.
2001		D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 108/2: line-up 2 a line of suspects at a police station, viewed by a crime victim, or by the police, for identification.
2008		R. Price Lush Life 247: However it goes with the other lineups today, don’t let them transport this Tucker kid .

2. gang-rape or group sex.

1913		G.J. Kneeland Commercialized Prostitution in N.Y. City 62: A ‘line-up’ is the ruin of a girl who flirts with men and accepts their advances and immoral suggestions. Finally she yields to a suggestion to visit a furnished room and the word quickly passes among the ‘gang.’ One by one the boys and men [...] visit this room.
1932		P.G. Cressey Taxi-Dance Hall 35: Line-up, the – Immorality engaged in by several men and a girl.
1950		Goldin et al. DAUL 126/2: Line-up, n. [...] 3. Criminal assault upon a woman by a series of men.
1959		W. Brown Teen-Age Mafia 71: Whitey’d probably call for a line-up tonight and lead off himself.
1962		L. Block ‘Naked and the Deadly’ in One Night Stands (2008) 272: The bachelor dinner [...] dirty jokes, dirty movies, dirty toasts, a lineup with a local whore.
1967		(con. 1920s) J. Thompson South of Heaven (1994) 135: There won’t be any lineup over here on payday.
1973		(con. mid-1960s) J. Patrick Glasgow Gang Observed 52: The phrase ‘line-up’ [...] was normally used to describe the queue of boys waiting to have sexual intercourse in one of the ‘gang bangs’. [Ibid.] 107: She performed numerous times on Friday and Saturday nights to deal with ‘the big line-up’ that followed her about the streets.
1998		I. Welsh Filth 218: A group of the young funny fellies that used tae hing aboot up there having a line up wi the Provist.
2000		T. Udo Vatican Bloodbath 25: It’s yer mammy, Billy, she’s giein line ups for aw’ the Bhoys at ten pee a shot.
2011		G. Knight Hood Rat 151: Girls have to perform line-ups to a group of gang members and they film it on their camera-phones.

3. attrib. use of sense 2.

1956

‘Vin Packer’ Young and Violent 24: Who’s gonna shell out two skins for a line-up broad, for Christ—.

4. (US Und.) the personnel of a group, e.g. a criminal hierarchy.

1931

C.B. Yorke ‘Mob Murder’ in Gangland Stories Mar. 🌐 I’ve been out of town and don’t know the line-ups any more.

5. (US drugs) the consumption in quick succession of a glass of beer, a puff on a marijuana cigarette, a line of cocaine, a shot of whisky and a puff on a cigarette.

2001

N. Green Shooting Dr. Jack (2002) 126: I wind up doing lineups. You ever do those? A beer, a joint, a line of coke, a shot, and a cigarette.

6. (N.Z. prison) a form of punishment gauntlet through which prisoners are forced run between two lines of officers who beat them up.

2001

D. Looser Boobslang [U. Canterbury D.Phil. thesis] 108/2: line-up 3 a practice whereby several (usually 15) prison officers line up in two rows. An inmate walks through between the officers and they beat the inmate up.

7. (US) the traditional parade of a brothel’s prostitutes so as a client may choose his partner(s).

2017

D. Winslow The Force [ebook] She doesn’t do the old ‘lineup’ anymore; the men preselect online.