Green’s Dictionary of Slang

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You Can’t Win choose

Quotation Text

[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (1926) 231: When spring came, my Chinese ‘tillicum,’ which is Chinook for friend, and I were the only felony prisoners in the ‘skookum house,’ or jail.
at skookum house, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 254: I [...] ‘slipped’ the town marshal his ‘once a week’.
at once a week, n.2
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 207: He was a fine fellow, an Englishman, and to use an English expression in describing him, I’ll say he was ‘a bit of all right’.
at bit of all right, a, phr.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win 60: They’ll wise up an’ you’ll lose her, or put her up against hop, an’ you’ll have a bum on your hands.
at against, prep.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 14: I am not lugging in the fact that I was left motherless at the age of ten to alibi myself away from anything.
at alibi (up), v.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 113: That’s why you are declared ‘in and in’ with the works.
at in and in, adv.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 27: I think you’re on the square with me, and I’m going to be on the up and up with you.
at on the up and up (adj.) under up-and-up, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 98: The ‘target’ is the most reliable man in the mob [...] He is the first one to get shot at and the last. It’s his job to carry the heavy artillery and stand off the natives while the others get the coin, and then to cover the get-away.
at artillery, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 190: The quantity of food I put away convinced them I belonged on the water front.
at put away, v.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 164: The dirty, big, red-headed Amazonian battle-ax.
at battle-axe, n.1
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 44: When he does squawk, like this one, the only thing to do is to blow back his money.
at blow back, v.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 282: The jacket is no longer in use and no purpose would be served by living over those three days in the ‘bag’.
at bag, n.1
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 134: You’re in with what ‘gow’ I’ve got. Let’s bang it up before they come and take it away from us.
at bang up, v.1
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 175: The beer bums and barrel-house five cent whiskey bums came under my notice.
at barrelhouse, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 223: Red don’t see any use in givin’ himself a bawl-out by indentifyin’ any dead burglars.
at bawl-out, n.1
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 172: We’ll hike the forty miles into town [...] beat off the box, and get a couple of horses out of the livery stable.
at beat off (v.) under beat, v.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 152: Some hard-fisted miner beefed him like an ox with a fast one to the jaw, and kicked his ‘gat’ out into the street.
at beef, v.2
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 14: It has often been a question with me just how much the best of it a boy has [...] who has a home and its influences.
at best (of it), n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 175: The hunt was still on for the burglar with the big end of the money.
at big end (of) (n.) under big, adj.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 61: One of them was unrolling a ‘bindle’ of blankets.
at bindle, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 138: Last night we ducks out and down Jackson Street to the commission houses and gather up a couple of bindles of wood.
at bindle, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 61: Come on down, kid. Don’t be leery. We’re only a couple of harmless bindle stiffs.
at bindle stiff (n.) under bindle, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 217: All prisoners got a plug of ‘black strap’ chewing tobacco every week.
at black strap (n.) under black, adj.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 258: A more careful and experienced ‘blacksmith’ would have taken measures to prevent that big safe from falling on its face.
at blacksmith, n.1
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 179: Harvest workers were called blanket stiffs or gay cats.
at blanket stiff (n.) under blanket, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 151: His ‘cappers,’ ‘boosters,’ and ‘shills’ fought with the yokels for a chance to get something for nothing and always beat them to the pieces of soap containing the money.
at booster, n.1
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win (2000) 163: Mary hits me in the back of the head with a bottle of beer, and when I go down she puts the boots to me.
at put the boots to (v.) under boot, the, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win 24: I ‘lived at the hotel,’ had ‘nobody to boss me around’.
at boss, v.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win 93: Shorty was one of the patricians of the prison, a ‘box man’ doing time for bank burglary.
at boxman, n.
[US] J. Black You Can’t Win 163: The ‘brass’ was portioned out and they started uptown to ‘tell the natives how it happened.’.
at brass, n.1
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