dark n.
1. (Aus.) Australian-distilled, dark, very strong brandy [the dark red colour].
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Life in Victoria I 166: Fill us a nobbler – dark; what’s yours, mate? | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Leeds Times 5 Feb. 6/1: It was not thought polite the refuse [...] the ‘brandy spider’ or the ’nobbler dark’. | |
 | Desperate Character I 39–40: ‘Two dark, my dear’ [...] The liquor was brandy – colonial brandy – of the darkest hue and most excruciating strength. |
2. (US) a derog. term for a black person [abbr. darkie n. (1)/SE dark].
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | N.-Y. Trib. 4 Mar. n.p.: They [slaves] were assisted by two venerable old darks who were sitting cross-legged on the floor [DA]. | |
| Nat. Police Gaz. (NY) 15 Nov. 14/3: They [business men] play on a regular system, and it does not become with them a fever as it is with the ‘darks’. | |
| Yale Yarns 46: You darks are just as safe under a democratic regime as a republican. | |
| letter from Jamaica, 27 Mar. in Atkinson Letters of Susan Hale (1919) 384: Two darks are lying on their back on the sunny curbstone. | |
| Battlers 235: To take up with a girl whose folk travel, and not only that . . . dark into the bargain! It’s just the limit! | |
| Down These Mean Streets (1970) 178: I watched a self-chosen white man make it from a dark scene. | |
| Living Black 127: Some of the darks are not too happy. |
3. (Aus./US prison) solitary confinement in a dark cell.
| Confessions of Convict 258: ‘It’s so dull here, I’m sure to break out.’ ‘And then you’ll go to the “dark”.’. | |
| Bulletin (Sydney) 27 Sept. 33/1: I have known a man get seven days ‘dark’ for putting his initials on a whitewashed wall. |
4. (Aus.) a nickname for those with dark hair or complexion.
| (con. WWI) Gloss. of Sl. [...] in the A.I.F. 1921–1924 (rev. t/s) n.p.: dark. Mode of addressing especially those with dark hair or complexion. |
5. (US campus) a fool, a dullard [dark adj. (1)].
| Current Sl. I:3 2/1: Dark, n. A sluggish, stupid person. | |
| Current Sl. IV:1. |
6. (Aus. prison) tobacco [the dark red colour].
| Doing Time 189: dark: tobacco. | |
| Aus. Prison Sl. Gloss. 🌐 Dark. 1. Tobacco. |
7. (UK drugs) heroin.
| ‘The Truth’ 🎵 The bud is green, the dark is brown and the crack look yellow. | |
| What They Was 34: Shotters [...] waiting to serve the cats with dark n light which means heroin and crack. |
In compounds
(US) the black area of a town or city; also attrib.; thus darktowner.
| Campbell’s Gazeteer of Missouri 430: Lincolnville, adjacent to Sedalia, sometimes called St. Eyre, and popularly known as ‘Darkeytown,’ has a population of about 1,000, all of whom are colored. | |
| Staunton Spectator (VA) 22 Apr. 1/8: Old Aunt Susan Taylor, as she was called by all who knew her, died last night at her residence in Darkytown. | |
| ‘Gleanings for the “DAE” Supplement’ in AS XXII:3 202/1: The Darktown Fire Brigade—Saved! | |
| Coburg Leader (Vic.) 1 June 4/5: The carnival committee should hand over those two drain pipes [...] to the darktown fire brigade. | |
| Bismarck Wkly Trib. (ND) 8 Feb. 8/2: The whole of Darktown danced [...] ’Liza Jane was whooped up as only Darktown knows how. | |
| Coburg Leader (Vic.) 8 June 1/5: It is not generally known that the A.S.S. the Darktowner’s had in the procession is a full half brother to O.D.R. | |
| Truth (Sydney) 24 Feb. 4/8: The Darktown Debating Club once chose as a matter for deep discussion the following somehwat simple subject [etc.]. | |
| Times (Richmond, VA) 15 Dec. 15/7: The undertaker [...] is the most unpopular man in Darkytown. | |
| [song title] Make No Mistake: A Darktown Suggestion. | |
| Rock Is. Argus 6 Apr. 8/2: The old time exponents of black face comedy, in their funny sketch, ‘Dark-town Doings’. | |
| Falls City Trib. (NE) 12 Aug. 13/1: The most interesting fire is always a blaze in Darktown [...] The negroes begin to empty houses of the content for blocks around. | |
| Rock Is. Argus (IL) 21 Mar. 2/1: Night Captain Packy Phelan and Detective George Shanley made a raid in darkytown invading the colored precinct on Fifth Street. | |
| [song title] The Sheathgown in Darktown. | |
| Sun. Times (Perth) 22 May 2nd sect. 10/4: It is feared that if [Jack] Johnson is getting the better of Jeff a stray shot from the ringside will, plunge Darktown into mourning. | |
| East Oregonian 17 Mar. 2/6: Bill Bailey, one of the darkeytown merrymakers, started [...] ‘All Aboard for Monkey Town’. | |
| Sport (Adelaide) 15 Feb. 11/3: Peter A, the champion negro swimmer, is going to swim Billy W for the Darktown championship. | |
![[NZ]](/static/img/flags/nz.png "New Zealand") | N.Z. Truth 31 Jan. 2/8: The arrangement is [...] more on the lines of a Darktown fire brigade than [...] of a sensible body of men. | |
| Watchman & Southron (Sumter, SC) 15 July 8/6: Lucious [sic] Fruit Given Away and Provide a Feast in Darkeytown [...] when six box cars loaded with watermelons were derailed. | |
| ‘Mirandy’ 🎵 The dark-town duke of Jacksonville was a Jackson nicknamed Sandy, / This dusky duke from Jacksonville had a gal they called Mirandy. | |
| Hunter-Trader-Trapper 39 54: Brother Smith owned the best coon dog in the ebony community of Darkytown [...] In Darkytown it is a tradition that left handed razor' manipulators are not to be held lightly. | |
| Negro Workaday Songs 69: I’m de rough stuff of dark-town alley, / I’m de man dey hates to see. | |
| Rebellion 97: Parson Alderson of Darkeytown was caught calling once too often on the fascinating Mrs. Pansy Blue. | |
| ‘How Ya Feelin’?’ 🎵 Say, Mandy Green, that Darktown queen, / Never seems to hold her man. | |
| Deep River 209: They want the white women to skulk at home, frightened to death, while they have their good time in darkeytown. | |
| Sat. Eve. Post 217 53: All his life the dapper little Beau Krummell of Birmingham’s Darktown had lived by his wits. | |
| USA Confidential 259: A high police official, a power in Darktown, owns and operates several colored whore-houses. | |
| N.Y. Amsterdam News 5 Apr. 13: ‘Bronzeville’ in Chicago, ‘Black Bottom’ in Natchez, ‘Dark Town’ in Birmingham and ‘Naptown’ in Indianapolis. | |
| Burn, Killer, Burn! 10: Darkytown, the dingy, tattered side of life. | |
| letter 23 March in Proud Highway (1997) 564: Negro gangs on darktown streetcorners. | |
| Prettybelle 69: I used to dream that Johnny was hiding out in Darkytown, in blackface or something. | |
| Six Out Seven (1994) 206: Here’s one standing right on my own front porch [...] lippin me just like I strayed into Jackson darktown. | |
| ‘Jungletown Jihad’ in Destination: Morgue! (2004) 327: Darktown dipped by. Shit shacks, shine stands. | |
| Widespread Panic 12: I drove a Packard pimpmobile. I won it in a darktown dice game. |
SE in slang uses
In compounds
1. a nightwatchman.
| Street Robberies Considered 31: Darkman, Watchman. |
2. see darkmans n. (1)
In phrases
(US) of coffee, black.
| ‘Dict. of Diningroom Sl.’ in Brooklyn Daily Eagle 3 July 13: ‘Coffee in the dark’ and ‘slope in a cup with the light out’ signify coffee without milk. | |
| Boston Globe 24 Feb. 18: The next order was for raw on the side, coffee in the dark and plenty of pogie. In response to this came rare roast beef, black coffee and a double allowance of bread. | |
| Commercial (Union City, TN) 22 May 5/1: The woman ordered a cup of coffee with cream, two lumps of sugar [...] The man wanted a cup of coffee without cream [...] the waiter ordered, ‘Cup of mud, two chunks of ballast, milk the Jersey [...] Draw another in the dark’. | |
| ‘Linguistic Concoctions of the Soda Jerker’ in AS XI:1 43: DRAW ONE. Cup of coffee. [...] DRAW ONE IN THE DARK. Black coffee. | |
| Hash House Lingo 7: Black coffee is ordered with [...] draw one in the dark. |
(US black) a very dark night, with neither moon nor stars.
| Orig. Hbk of Harlem Jive 59: I’m stiffing on the stroll on the late dark. |