![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States")
Amer. Lang. 156: Allrightnick means an upstart, an offensive boaster.at allrightnik, n.
Amer. Lang. 156: Allrightnick means an upstart, an offensive boaster. Amer. Lang. 311: Shoo-fly afflicted the American people for at least two years, and ‘I don’t think’ and aber nit quite as long.at shoo-fly!, excl.
Amer. Lang. (2nd edn) 186: Printery (for printing-office) appeared very early, and in late years it has been reinforced by many analogues, e.g., beanery, bootery, boozery, toggery.at boozery, n.
Amer. Lang. (2nd edn) 108: A great many of them have remained Californian localisms, among them such verbs as to yen (to desire strongly, as a Chinaman desires opium) .at yen, v.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 577: The substitution of far-fetched figures for literal description gives the felon altar for toilet-seat.at altar, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: The discourse heard in mission-halls is angel-food, and the bum who listens to it is a mission-stiff.at angel food (n.) under angel, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: A Catholic priest is a buck or Galway, and the Salvation Army is Sally Ann.at Sally Ann, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 560: [Jack] Conway, who died in 1928, is credited with the invention of palooka (a third-rater), belly-laugh, Arab (for Jew).at arab, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: Milk is cow-juice, butter is salve or axle-grease.at axle grease, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 578: Down to a few years ago, for some reason unknown, Cockney rhyming cant, supposed to have come in by way of Australia, was very popular among American thieves. It consists largely of a series of rhyming substitutions, e.g., [...] babbling brook for crook.at babbler, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: In [hobo language] a bed-roll is a bindle or balloon, and the man who carries one is a bindle-stiff.at balloon, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 580: In virtually all American prisons [...] a county workhouse is a band-box, and a police-station is a can.at bandbox, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 579: The drug peddlers who began to flourish after the passage of the Harrison Act in 1915 were ready with neologisms to reinforce the terminology of drug addiction [...] A mixture of cocaine and morphine was called a whizz-bang.at whiz bang, n.2
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 580: Some of their inventions, indeed, were adopted by the whole population, e.g., [...] bathtub-gin.at bathtub hooch (n.) under bathtub, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 582: In the days before hitch-hiking, hoboes spent a great deal of their time stealing rides on the railroads, and their railroad vocabulary remains rich and racy. [...] a coal-car is a battle-wagon.at battle wagon (n.) under battle, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 580: In virtually all American prisons [...] sausages are beagles or pups.at beagle, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 573: There was some fashioning of counter-words and phrases from French materials, e.g., boocoo or boocoop (beaucoup), toot sweet (tout de suite) and trez beans (tres bien), but neither class was numerous.at beaucoup, adv.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 577: Finally, he devises many new verbs and verb-phrases or provides old ones with new meanings, e.g., to belch (to talk).at belch, v.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 304: I am informed by a correspondent that in 1933 the pious Los Angeles Times printed sow-bosom instead of sow-belly.at sow-belly, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 580: In virtually all American prisons [...] visiting day is the big day, a prison visitor is a hoosier.at big day (n.) under big, adj.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 568: Most of these, of course, had their brief days and then disappeared, but there were others that got into the common vocabulary and still survive, e.g., blizzard, to hornswoggle, sockdolager and rambunctious.at blizzard, n.1
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 557: The French word tête has been a sound name for the human head for many centuries, but its origin was in testa, meaning a pot, a favorite slang word of the soldiers of the decaying Roman Empire, exactly analogous to our block, nut and bean.at block, n.1
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 581: In virtually all American prisons [...] To escape is to crash, to blow, to cop a mope, or to go over the wall.at blow, v.1
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 295: For Czech: bohoe, bohick, bohee, bohunk, bootchkey and cheskey.at boho, n.1
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 580: In virtually all American prisons [...] eggs are bombs.at bomb, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 560: [note] I have never devised anything properly describable as slang, save maybe booboisie. This was a deliberate invention. One evening in February, 1922, Ernest Boyd and I were the guests of Harry C. Black at his home in Baltimore. We fell to talking of the paucity of words to describe the victims of the Depression then current, and decided to remedy it. So we put together a list of about fifty terms, and on Feb. 15 I published it in the Baltimore Evening Sun. It included boobariat, booberati, boobarian, boobomaniac, boobuli and booboisie. Only booboisie, which happened to be one of my contributions, caught on.at booboisie, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 564: The substitution of far-fetched figures for literal description gives him [...] booze-foundry for saloon, and cart-wheel for dollar.at booze foundry (n.) under booze, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 218: The instalment furniture stores have also borrowed from the yiddish. They are called by their salesmen borax-houses, and the borax apparently comes from the Yiddish borg, meaning credit.at borax, n.1
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 568: At Oxford [the vocabulary] is made up in large part of a series of childish perversions of common and proper nouns, effected by adding -er or inserting gg. Thus, breakfast becomes brekker.at brekker, n.
Amer. Lang. (4th edn) 581: In virtually all American prisons [...] To be released is to spring or to hit the bricks.at hit the bricks (v.) under bricks, n.
load more results