Dictionary of Contemporary Slang, Third Edition; Tony Thorne (A & C Black, 2005)

‘You can’t dry hump good in the car. Unless you’re a midget.’

(High-school student, IT magazine, June 1972)

‘…for £20 a head the “cuddle party” is bringing together lost souls…there are strict rules: no alcohol, no nudity and emphatically no “dry humping”.’

(Sunday Times, 25 July 2004)

D.T.s, the n

delirium tremens; trembling as a result of alcohol abuse

dub1 n

1.a kind of heavy reggae music in which instrumental tracks already recorded are electronically altered and overlaid (‘dubbed’ one on another) with vocals and sound effects to create a new piece of music. The form was popular in Jamaica and Britain in the late 1970s and early 1980s.

2.American a cigarette

3.a fool, an incompetent. An almost archaic word which survives among older speakers in the USA and Australia.

dub2 adj American

fashionable, aware. In this sense the word was a vogue term of the lexicon of the grunge movement originating in Seattle in 1993 and functioned as a synonym of hip and dope, etc.

dubbed (up) adj British

locked up, incarcerated. A 1950s underworld usage probably deriving from an archaic use of dub to mean ‘key’ or ‘lock’. Tucked up is a more recent alternative.

dubber n American

a cigarette. The word’s etymology is unclear.

dubbo n Australian

a fool. An embellishment of the archaic dub meaning an awkward or incompetent person, especially a rustic simpleton.

ducats n pl American See duckets

duchess n British

a woman, usually one’s wife. The image is of a dignified, respectable female who is no longer young. This cockney usage is still in evidence although roughly a century old. The word is either a straightforward simile or a shortening of a rhyming-slang phrase, ‘Duchess of Fife’: wife.

duck1, duck egg n

a score of nil or zero in sport, especially cricket. The term is at least a century old and derives from the resemblance

between the written or printed 0 and the egg.

duck2 n American

an unattractive female. The term, which may be connected to the notion of a waddling gait, is in use among college students. In the late 1950s and early 1960s the same word was used by beatniks as a neutral synonym for chick.

Compare mucky duck

duckburg n American

a rural, provincial town. A mildly contemptuous term.

duckets n pl American

money, dollars. An appropriation of the archaic ‘ducats’ (Venetian gold coins used all over Renaissance Europe) heard in black street argot and campus slang, and high-school slang from the 1990s.

‘He earns minor duckets in a thankless job.’

(Clueless, US film, 1995)

ducks, ducs, duc-duc n pl American variant forms of duckets

duck’s arse n British See D.A. 1

duck’s breakfast n

a drink of water. A humorous expression on the pattern of Mexican breakfast, ‘pelican’s breakfast’, etc. The geographical origin of the phrase is obscure.

duck shoot n American

an exceptionally easy task. From the image of shooting sitting ducks.

duck-squeezer n American

an enthusiast for environmental issues. A pejorative categorisation heard particularly on campuses, the term is part of a set including eagle freak, tree-hugger, earth biscuit, granola, etc.

ducky adj

cute, delightful. A word which today is almost invariably used ironically or facetiously. It derives from ‘duck’ as a term of endearment.

dude n

a man. The 19th-century American sense of dude as a ‘fop’, an overdressed city dweller, etc. (familiar from westerns and ‘dude ranches’) gave rise to a 20thcentury black usage meaning first pimp or ‘fancy man’, then simply a (male) person. The term came into vogue in the 1970s and spread to Britain, where in 1973 it was briefly adopted by the gay and teenage milieus (appearing for instance in the title of the David Bowie

song ‘All the Young Dudes’). In the late 1980s the word had again surfaced in teenage parlance, inspired by its continuing presence in black American street speech. Dude was originally a German rustic term for a fool.

‘There were more commercials…but no more crime…nothing about two dudes in Halloween masks breaking into a Bloomfield Village home.’

(The Switch, Elmore Leonard, 1978)

duds n pl

clothes. A word (the plural is usually used) which is approximately three hundred years old, deriving from the Middle English dudde, meaning a coarse cloth cloak. The plural of the word later came to mean rags or clothes and now sometimes has the extended sense of an outfit and/or set of accessories.

duff1 n

1. the backside, buttocks. Duff is a 19thcentury word for boiled dumpling or pudding (surviving in the British ‘plum duff’), from which this usage was probably derived.

‘Come on you turkeys, get off your duffs and give me some info.’

(Buck Rogers in the 25th Century, US film, 1979)

2. See up the duff

duff2 adj

useless, inferior. The word derives from a piece of 18th-century thieves’ jargon meaning worthless or counterfeit, related to duffer which originally denoted a seller of supposedly stolen goods.

duff3 vb Australian

to steal. A verb formed from the generalised negative sense of duff. The usage is now fairly rare.

DUFF n

an unattractive female. The letters stand for ‘designated ugly fat friend’. Pronounced as a word, not letter by letter, this pejorative epithet has been used by younger males since around 2000.

duffer n British

an ugly or unattractive female. An item of student slang in use in London and elsewhere since around 2000.

duffies n pl Australian underpants, usually male

duff up/over vb British

to beat up. Mild-sounding terms for what may be anything from a children’s scuffle

to a murderous attack. The modern sense, in vogue since the 1950s, seems to derive from an earlier sense meaning to ‘ruin’ which is related to the adjective duff.

‘Michael threatened to duff him up if he ever did anything like that again.’

(Recorded, teenage girl, London, 1986) dufus, doofus n American

a.an eccentric person

b.a foolish or gauche person

c.a gadget, intriguing object, thingummy

All three senses are typically used on college campuses. The origin of the term is obscure. It is probably an invented word with a mock Latin suffix, although there is a possible connection with doofart, a Scandinavian word for ‘fool’.

duke it, duke it out, duke it up vb

to fight, brawl or box. Later formulations from the noun dukes, meaning fists.

duke on it vb

to shake hands. A slang version of ‘shake on it’, from dukes, meaning fists.

dukes n pl American

fists. This has been part of the jargon of streetfighters and pugilists since the turn of the 20th century. It originates either in the rhyming slang Duke of York: fork, i.e. a hand or finger, or from a Romany word meaning palm or hand. The word is most commonly heard in the challenge ‘put up your dukes’ or the phrase duke it out (to engage in a fist-fight).

duke someone vb

to slash someone across the legs with a sharp instrument as, e.g., a gang punishment. Recorded among Asian youths in Oldham, UK, 2003.

dukey rope n

a gold chain as worn by males. It is an emblematic accessory among rap and hip hop aficionados.

dumbass n, adj American

(a person who is) stupid. A relatively modern extension of dumb.

See also dumbo

dumb cluck n

a stupid or gormless person. In origin a rustic Americanism, probably inspired by the supposed stupidity of chickens.

See also dumbo

dumbell n American a stupid person.

See also dumbo

dumb-head n

a stupid person. An elaboration of the American sense of dumb which is a direct translation of the German Dummkopf: fool.

dumbo n, adj

(a person who is) stupid. The American use of dumb for stupid, reinforced by the German dumm, is as old as the British sense of mute. Since the 1960s the American sense has been adopted in colloquial British English. This variant word may have been reinforced by the Walt Disney film Dumbo (which was itself inspired by ‘Jumbo’, the name of an elephant at London Zoo).

dumdum, dum-dum n

a stupid person. An embellishment (by the linguistic process known as ‘reduplication’, which is common in nursery words) of dumb.

See also dumbo

dummy n American

a fool, simpleton or dupe. From ‘dumb’ in the American sense.

‘The dummy got too chummy in a Bing Crosby number.’

(Salome Maloney, John Cooper Clarke, 1978)

See also dumbo

dummy up vb

to keep silent; refuse to speak. A more robust alternative to clam up, used for instance by underworld characters in fact and fiction.

dump n

1.a dirty, messy or dilapidated place. The word in this sense is now so common as to be a colloquialism rather than slang (which it would have been considered to be, say, in the 1950s).

2.an act of defecation, usually in a phrase such as ‘take or have a dump’

‘What are you doing back there, taking a dump?’

(Friday 13th Part VI, US film, 1986)

dumper n American

a violent male devotee of aggressive sexual practices. The term is used by police and pornographers to describe males indulging in rough sexual treatment of women.

dump on (someone) vb

to criticise or chastise, heap blame or responsibility on, denigrate. This expression is now often used as an innocuous

colloquialism, although it derives from the decidedly vulgar sense of dump 2 above.

dun vb British

to criticise, denigrate, berate (someone). The usage was recorded among middle-class adolescent males in 2000.

dune-coon n American

an Arab, Middle-Eastern person. A derogatory term recorded in armedforces’ use during the Iraq conflict of 2004.

dung-puncher n

a male homosexual. A highly pejorative term paralleling fudgepacker, browniehound and turd burglar in the reference to the faecal aspects of sodomy.

dunkie n British

a girl. The word is probably an abbreviation of ‘dunkin’ donut’, a trademark name of an American chain of doughnut and coffee shops, although there may be a connection with the sexual sense of dunking. The overtones of the expression, used by teenagers in the 1970s, were not respectful.

dunking n British

sex. A euphemism which was in middleclass and ‘society’ use in the early and mid-1970s. It now seems to have fallen out of use but might be revived (on the pattern of similarly predictable terms which are periodically rediscovered). The origin is of course in the practice of dunking biscuits (in Britain) or doughnuts (in America) in tea or coffee.

dunky n British

a condom. The term is a back-formation from ‘dunk’ as a sexual euphemism.

dunnee, dunny n Australian

a toilet, especially an ‘outhouse’ or outside lavatory. The word was reintroduced to some British speakers via the Australianisms in the cartoon strip The Adventures of Barry McKenzie in Private Eye magazine in the late 1960s. In fact this term has existed for approximately 200 years in British English as ‘dunnakin’ (spelt in various ways, including ‘dunnigan’ in Ireland) and had become obsolete. The ultimate origin of these words is obscure but seems to be related to archaic dialect words for excrement such as danna, or its colour (‘dun’).

dunning n British

an admonition, telling-off, humiliation. The term has been recorded since 2000, but may relate to a much older use of the word to mean ‘harass or importune’.

‘Three duhs in quick succession indicate a relatively light dunning, but said more slowly and forcefully the dunning becomes more severe.’

(Recorded, London student, 2000)

durk n British See derk

durr-brain, durb n British

a foolish, slow-witted person. This popular term of abuse among schoolchildren probably imitates the hesitation noise supposedly made, e.g., before responding of a simpleton or dullard, but might possibly be a version of the American ‘dough-brain’.

duss, dust vb

to depart, leave. In this sense the word dust was recorded among black Americans as long ago as the 1930s, the expression deriving from the image of a cloud of dust being thrown up. As ‘duss’, the term was fashionable among gang members and schoolchildren in the UK from the mid-1990s.

It’s the beast-man, let’s duss! dust1 n

angel dust, P.C.P. Among young people the shortened form was considered cooler than the full phrase in the late 1980s

‘Johnny does dust.’

(Graffito, Hammersmith, London, 1987)

dust2 vb American

to kill. A ‘tough-guy’ euphemism implying the casual elimination of nuisances, typically in a gangland or military context. The origin is probably in a nowobsolete use of dust, meaning to ‘hit’, which survives in the expression ‘dustup’.

dustbin lids n pl British

children, kids. A piece of fairly modern rhyming slang which has spread beyond its working-class London context. The singular form exists, but is rare. ‘Saucepan lids’ is an alternative form.

dust bunny n American

a ball of fluff lurking in an undusted part of a household. (Also known as dust kitty and many other terms.)

‘She won’t make the bed, she won’t sweep up the dust bunnies or nothin’.’

(The Rockford Files, US TV series, 1980)

dust kitty n American

a.a ball of fluff, found for instance under a bed or in another undusted part of a household. This domestic phenomenon has given rise to a number of colourful expressions in American English (dust bunny, beggar’s velvet, ‘house moss’ and ghost turds are others), but none in British English.

b.the navel. So-called due to its being a repository for fluff, etc.

dusty, dustie n British

1.an old person. A term of mild contempt or even affection to their elders among Sloane Rangers and other young people of the late 1970s, becoming more widespread since. A less common alternative to wrinkly. In The Official Sloane Ranger Handbook (1982) Ann Barr and Peter York attempted to define the ages of adults as follows: wrinkly (40 to 50 years old); crumbly (50 to 70 years old); and dusty (70 and above).

2.a dustman. Not as common an abbreviation as postie for postman, for instance.

Dutch1 n British

1.one’s wife. This hundred-year-old piece of cockney usage is still heard (invariably in the form ‘my old Dutch’), although now often used facetiously or self-consciously. It may be a shortening of duchess (originally ‘Duchess of Fife’, rhyming slang for wife), or she may be socalled after ‘an old Dutch clock’ (a homely piece of furniture with a broad open dial).

2.a friend, mate. A second cockney sense of the word comes from the rhyme ‘Dutch plate’.

Dutch2, Dutch fuck vb American

to have sex by putting the penis between the female breasts. Dutch here is used as in other expressions, like ‘Dutch auction’, ‘go Dutch’, etc., to mean unorthodox. In British armedservice slang Dutch fuck referred to lighting one cigarette from another.

dweeb n

a foolish, gormless or unpopular person. An American campus and high-school word of the late 1980s, adopted by British youth since 1988.

‘I didn’t even tell her my name – I am a dweeb!’

(18 Again!, US film, 1988)

dwem n

a ‘dead white European male’. A key term in the ‘politically correct’ lexicon of the mid-1990s; a dismissive categorisation of members of the supposed literary canon, such as Shakespeare.

dyke, dike n

a lesbian. The only common slang term to describe a female homosexual; it was first used derogatorily by heterosexuals, but it is now used by gay women themselves, though often wryly. When said by a heterosexual the word usually still carries overtones of the ‘aggressive masculine’ stereotype of a lesbian. No one has satisfactorily explained the term’s ultimate origin; it might be from an old pejorative euphemism for a woman’s genitals. Another, rather far-fetched, theory is that it is inspired by the story of the little Dutch

boy with his finger in the dyke. Whatever its origin the word seems to have been imported into British English from America between the world wars.

dykie, dyky n, adj

a.like a dyke, a lesbian

b.(of a woman) ‘masculine’ in behaviour and/or appearance

dykon n British

a lesbian. A variant form of dyke in use among schoolchildren since the 1990s. It may have originated as a blending of ‘dyke’ and ‘icon’, thus referring to the object of gay females’ admiration rather than the females themselves.

dynosupreme adj American

excellent, perfect, outstanding. Often an exclamation, this is a teenage vogue elaboration of supreme using a mockprefix based on ‘dynamo’ or ‘dynamic’, or a contraction of ‘dynamite’.

E n

1. (a dose of) the drug ecstasy. An abbreviation in vogue in the UK since the late 1980s.

She’s on E.

2. See big E, the

eagle freak n American

an enthusiast for environmental issues. A pejorative categorisation heard particularly on campuses, the term is part of a set including duck-squeezer, tree-hugger, earth biscuit, granola, etc.

earache n British

incessant chatter, complaining or nagging. The expression usually occurs in working-class speech.

Will you stop giving me all this earache about being late and let me eat my tea in peace.

ear-basher/-banger/-bender n

someone who talks incessantly, a person who harangues, nags or bores. Earbasher is heard in Britain and Australia; ear-banger and ear-bender are predominantly American.

earlies n pl British

underpants, knickers. A fairly obscure but surviving instance of 19th-century London rhyming slang. The rhyme is ‘early doors’: drawers. ‘Early doors’ is from theatrical jargon.

earner n British

a scheme or situation which brings financial advantage, especially when unexpected or illicit. Originally from the language of police and thieves, the term, especially in the vogue phrase ‘a nice little earner’, entered general circulation in the profit-oriented society of the late 1980s.

‘The job’s hard work, long hours and pretty boring – but at £70 a week it’s a nice little earner if you’re 15 and living at home.’

(Teenage truant, Observer, February 1988)

earnings n pl British

the proceeds of crime or dishonesty. An item from the language of adolescent gangs. The term was recorded in use among North London schoolboys in 1993 and 1994.

ear’ole1 n British

a dull, gormless or exasperating person. A word used typically by working-class schoolchildren in the 1970s to refer to tedious fellow pupils or adults.

ear’ole2 vb British

1.to ‘buttonhole’ (someone); in other words, to detain (someone) in conversation

2.to scrounge; from on the earhole/ ear’ole, which earlier in the 20th century meant to try to swindle

3.to nag, shout at, talk incessantly

4.to listen to, eavesdrop

All these senses of the word are in mainly working-class use and are most commonly heard in London.

earth biscuit n American

an enthusiast for environmental issues. A pejorative categorisation heard particularly on campuses, the term is part of a set including duck-squeezer, tree-hugger, eagle freak, granola, etc.

earwig vb British

1. to eavesdrop or listen out for news, danger, etc. A working-class word used by the underworld and, more innocuously, by or about neighbourhood gossips, etc.

‘You cunning git! You was earwiggin’ my conversation.’

(Only Fools and Horses, British TV comedy series, 1989)

2. to understand, realise. A less common sense of the word in this rhyming-slang expression (from twig).

ear-wigging n British

a synonym for ‘ear-bashing’, punning on the earwig insect and the 19th-century colloquial use of ‘wig’ to mean scold

‘That didn’t stop [David] Puttnam giving [Christopher] Patten a severe ear-wigging from the green pulpit last week.’

(Sunday Times, 26 November 1989)

ease down! exclamation calm down, relax

easy adj British

good, acceptable, pleasant. An all-pur- pose term of appreciation, used especially in provincial England since 2000, this adjectival usage is inspired by the earlier usage as an exclamation.

an easy night out She’s easy, man.

easy! exclamation

1.British a generalised cry of derision, triumph, joy, etc. The word is usually lengthened to ‘eezee!’ It originated on football terraces in the 1960s, and is often heard in repetitious crowd chants at sporting events

2.an all-purpose greeting or farewell which probably originated in gang usage whence it was adopted by adolescents in the 1990s.

Compare easy-seen! easy meat n

a.a person who is easy to seduce or take advantage of

b.something easy to achieve or acquire. The phrase has been in currency since the 1920s.

easy-peasy adj British

very easy indeed, posing no problem. A popular phrase with younger schoolchildren since the early 1980s, although common in Scotland and northern England for decades.

easy rider n British

(a drink of) cider. Rhyming slang employed by students since the later 1990s, using the name of the 1969 movie.

easy-seen! exclamation British

an elaboration of seen, used as an allpurpose exclamation of greeting, thanks, approbation, etc. The term was recorded in use among North London schoolboys in 1993 and 1994

eat, eat out, eat someone out vb

to perform cunnilingus. These Americanisms of the 1960s are heard in Australia and, to a lesser extent, in Britain.

eat dirt vb See eat shit

eat it! vb, exclamation American a euphemism for eat shit!

eat my shorts! exclamation American an exclamation of defiance or contempt, popular among male high-school and college students from the 1980s. The shorts in question are of course (unsavoury) male underwear.

eat shit vb

a.to submit to humiliation, to abase oneself. Until recently the phrase had more currency in the USA and Australia than in Britain.

b.eat shit! an American exclamation of defiance or contempt

Ebonics n American

a variety of English mainly consisting of street slang and in use among young blacks in the late 1990s. The word is constructed from ‘ebony’ and ‘phonics’. The school board in Oakland, California, was the first to recognise Ebonics, also known as ‘black-speak’ or jive talk, as a legitimate language variety.

ecaf n British

the face. An item of backslang which became part of the parlyaree in use among London gays from the 1950s.

Slap some make-up on your old ecaf.

eco-freak, eco-nut n

a person concerned with ecology and the environment. These dismissive or patronising terms, used by critics or mockers, surfaced in the 1970s.

ecstasy n

the drug MDMA (3,4 methylene dioxy methamphetamine). A preparation which was synthesised and patented in 1914 and rediscovered for recreational use in 1975 in the USA. The drug, related to speed, remained a minority taste until the early 1980s; it was used by Californian therapists among others and was legal until 1985. It is also known as E,

Epsom salts, X and adam.

‘Every generation finds the drug it needs…the cold, selfish children of 1985 think ecstasy will make them loved and loving.’

(Republican Party Reptile, P. J. O’Rourke, 1987)

edge city n

a sensation or situation in which one experiences tension, dread or anticipation. A dramatising of ‘edgy’ heard among drug users and progressive music fans.

edged adj American

nervous, anxious, irritated. This adaptation of the colloquial ‘edgy’ and the slang edge city was heard in black speech and campus slang from the early 1990s.

Edwardian n British

a teddy boy. A variant form of the name used seriously on occasions by journalists and facetiously by teddy boys themselves.

eek, eke n British

a.the face. A word heard in London theatrical and camp slang from the late 1950s. The etymology is obscure. One suggestion, unfortunately rather farfetched, is that it is from the scream of fright occasioned by glimpsing the said visage leering through the limelight.

b.face-paint, make-up. Also a theatrical term, presumably derived from the first sense. Slap is a more common alternative.

eff vb

a euphemism for fuck heard in America and Australia but more popular in Britain. It is most often encountered in the phrase ‘eff off’ and ‘effing and blinding’ (cursing, using bad language).

‘Mr … put his arms around my waist and tried to kiss my neck. I told him to eff off.’

(Victim of sexual harassment, Daily Mirror, 31 March 1989)

effect n See in effect effort n British

a.something or someone considered worthless, disappointing

b.an exclamation of derision or schadenfreude

Both senses of the word form part of playground slang: the first probably originating in adult speech, where it was an all-pur- pose term for any unnamed object or person.

egg n See lay an egg

egg and spoon n British

a black person. Rhyming slang for coon; this picturesque working-class expression, its origin in children’s egg-and- spoon races, usually implies contempt and dislike.

eggplant n American

an Afro-Caribbean person. The analogy is with the shiny, dark skin colour of the vegetable.

eggs-up adj British

intrusive, nosy. The term was recorded in West London in 1998. Extra and inna were contemporary synonyms.

eggy adj British

1.moody and/or agitated

He got really eggy when I said his new single was crap.

2.excellent, in playground parlance

In both senses the word has been fashionable among schoolchildren since the late 1990s.

ego-trip n

an exhibition of self-aggrandisement, self-indulgence or other selfishness. The term dates from the late 1960s and derives from the notion that under the influence of LSD (on a trip) enlightened persons will lose their ego, while the unenlightened may experience a concentration of selfish impulses. Trip later took on the generalised idea of behaviour or idée fixe, and ego, simply egomaniacal or egotistic.

Egyptian PT n British

sleeping. A joking and contemptuous expression dating from before World War II. It derives from the feats of legendary laziness imputed to Arabs in general by the British forces overseas. The phrase survives, mainly in publicschool and army slang.

elbow vb British

to dismiss (someone), to dispose of or reject (something). A more modern version of ‘give it/them the elbow’. It is often in the passive form ‘get elbowed’.

‘OK, elbow the buskers, we haven’t got time.’

(TV studio crew, One Day in the Life of Television, 1 November 1989)

elbow bender n British

a habitual imbiber of alcoholic liquor; a drunk. From the phrase to bend the elbow (in lifting a drink to the lips).

‘Sam Brown admits she became a bigtime boozer when she was a schoolgirl and is still a solid elbow-bender.’

(Photo caption, People, 23 April 1989)

electric soup n

alcoholic drink, a strong alcoholic punch. The phrase is predominantly heard in middle-class circles. It belongs to a set of synonymous phrases including lunatic soup and giggle water.

elephant n British

an unattractive female (not necessarily heavily built). In playground usage since 2000.

Compare nellie

elephants, elephant’s trunk adj British drunk. A piece of 100-year-old London rhyming slang which is still heard, although usually used facetiously.

I seen him down our local again – completely elephants.

elf n British

an unpleasant and/or obnoxious person. In playground usage since 2000.

el ----o n

a Spanish pattern applied jocularly to English words mainly by American speakers. The meaning is ‘the supreme

----’, ‘the quintessential ----’ or just ‘the

----’. It appears in ‘el creepo’, ‘el sleazo’, ‘el cheapo’, etc. This tendency (in imitation of Hispanic ‘low life’ speech) has been in evidence since the early 1970s.

See also the entries following

el primo n American

the very best, top quality. From Spanish in which it means the first (quality). The expression is used by Anglos, blacks, etc. in imitation of Hispanic speech.

el ropo n American

a cigar or joint, especially a large and noxious one, from the idea of low-grade tobacco resembling rope

elven adj British

a less common version of elvish

elvish, elfish adj British

bad, unpleasant, of poor quality. The term, of uncertain derivation, has been in playground usage since the late 1990s. It is probably unrelated to the Elvish language invented by J. R. R. Tolkien.

embalmed adj

drunk. A now fairly rare, predominantly middle-class euphemism, it is an old usage, probably coined in the 19th century and inspired by ‘balm’ (as a euphemism for comforting liquor), ‘balmy’ and the early 20th-century Americanism ‘embalming fluid’, meaning whisky.

embrocation n British

alcoholic drink. A humorous borrowing of the word for rub-on liniment, said mainly by the middle aged.

I think a spot of embrocation might be in order.

Emma Freuds n pl British haemorrhoids. An item of rhyming slang popularised by the comic Viz in its feature ‘Nobby’s Piles’. The name is that of a female TV presenter.

emmet n British

a tourist, an unwelcome stranger. A dialect word (meaning ‘ant’) used in Cornwall since the 1950s to refer disparagingly to swarms of holidaymakers. Grockle is another regional term with a similar meaning.

enchilada n American See big enchilada

ends n pl American

money. The term, probably originating in black street argot in the 1950s, was later adopted by college students. It may have begun as ‘N’s’, referring to (bank)notes, or possibly derived from the cliché ‘to make ends meet’. It is also said to be a shortening of ‘dividends’ or from ‘ends and means’.

endsville n, adj American

the ultimate; the best or the worst. From the language of hipsters and beatniks in the late 1950s, already sounding dated by the 1960s.

eppy n British

an instance of uncontrolled behaviour, fury, tantrum. The shortening of ‘epileptic fit’ has been part of playground parlance since at least the 1980s.

He threw an absolute eppy when he found out.

Epsom salts n British

the drug ecstasy. A vogue term on the acid-house scene in 1989. The expression was borrowed from the name of the old-fashioned purgative medicine (hydrated magnesium sulphate).

ept adj British

skilled, competent. A jocular back-for- mation from ‘inept’, heard in middleclass speech since the 1990s.

‘I’ve got to say she’s not very ept, is she?’

(Recorded, office manager, London, 1996)

Compare ert

equipment n

a.the male sex organs. An unromantic euphemism used by males and females alike.

b.a woman’s breasts. A rarer vulgarism, usually indicating unromantic appraisal.

’erb n See herb

’erbert n British

a foolish person, a cheeky, unwashed child. For many years, in London work- ing-class slang, Herbert or ’Erbert was used to refer to any otherwise unnamed man or boy. Gradually, probably by being used in phrases such as ‘silly ’erbert’, it came to have the more pejorative sense. There probably never was an eponymous Herbert; it was merely a common working-class name from the Edwardian era.

erdie n British

a tedious, orthodox, straight individual. The origin of the term is mysterious: Eric Partridge’s dictionary derives it somewhat unconvincingly from the German Erde, meaning ‘Earth’, as in earth-bound.

‘Most managers were erdies; agents ditto.’

(Rolling Stones’ manager Andrew Oldham in 1965, quoted in Christopher Sandford’s Mick Jagger: Primitive Cool, 1993)

eric n British

1.an erection. A schoolboy term.

2.a foolish, gauche or unpopular male. This sense of the word also occurs in school argot and may be a corruption of erk or oik.

erk n British

a vulgar, inferior or tedious person. A piece of armed-service and public-school slang which some authorities derive from aircraft. It may in origin be a version of oik.

erp, earp vb American

to vomit. The word is echoic and has been recorded among teenagers of both sexes.

Someone’s erped in the parking lot.

-ers n, suffix British

a termination added to all or part of a standard word. In public-school, armedforces’ or middle-class speech it confers familiarity or affection. The core-word is sometimes preceded by harry-, as in harry-starkers for stark naked. This speech-pattern, found risible by many since the 1960s, arose at Oxford and in public schools in the late 19th century.

See also preggers; honkers; starkers

ert adj British

alert, lively, aware. A humorous backformation from the standard term inert,

heard in middle-class adult speech since the 1990s.

You’ve got to try to be a bit more ert!

Compare ept

Ethiopia! exclamation British

a jocular farewell, coined by analogy with

Abyssinia!

Eurotrash n

the European ‘jet-set’ and their hangerson. A version of ‘international white trash’, heard in ‘society’ and journalistic circles.

‘I enjoyed it, famous bits of Eurotrash enjoy it, but Miss Mouse might not feel altogether comfortable.’

(Rupert Christiansen, Harpers and Queen, November 1989)

eve n British

the drug MDEA, a stimulant related to ecstasy which is known as adam (from MDMA)

evil adj American

impressive, admirable. This use of the word originated in the jargon of black musicians; a rarer variant of bad or wicked. It is now used by teenagers of all ethnic origins, in Britain and Australia as well as the USA.

evil(s) n See give someone evil(s)

eviling n

adopting a menacing attitude, glaring, frowning. The word, used intransitively and transitively, is part of the post-2000 lexicon of teenagers and younger schoolchildren in the UK. Giving someone evil(s) is an alternative form.

ex n See X

excrement exclamation, adj British excellent. A jocular usage among students since 2000.

exercise the ferret vb Australian

to have sex. An unromantic male expression equating the penis with the aggressive, hyperactive animal and its well-known proclivity for wriggling into crevices and tunnels.

exes n pl British

expenses. A variant form of eckies.

extra adj British

intrusive, nosy. In this sense the word was recorded in West London in 1998. Contemporary synonyms were eggs-up and inna.