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

The standard term has been used in these senses by adolescents in the UK and USA since around 2000.

shack vb American

to stab (someone). The word was used by prison inmates and members of the underworld.

shackout vb British

to run away, escape, leave hurriedly. A term used by young street-gang members in London since around 2000.

shack up vb

to live with someone in a sexual relationship outside marriage. Such a relationship is sometimes known as a ‘shack-up’. The term was an Americanism first used by itinerants and marginals between the World Wars; it was adopted into World English during the 1960s.

shade n American

a receiver of stolen goods, fence. The word, an item of slang from the police and underworld lexicon, in use since the 1920s may be derived from ‘shady’ (dealing).

shades n pl

sunglasses. The word was first used in this sense in the USA in the 1940s. (Shades are blinds in American English.)

shady adj American

of dubious quality, potentially dangerous. A synonym of sketch(y) and dodgy.

shaft1 n

1. the penis. A predictable but rare use of the standard term.

2a. a sex partner

A good shaft.

These usages are back-formations from the verb.

2b. an act of sexual intercourse a quick shaft

3. the shaft an alternative form of a shafting. It usually occurs in the form ‘get the shaft’.

shaft2 vb

1.to have sex with, penetrate. From the noun shaft, denoting the penis.

2.to ruin, damage, destroy (someone). Most often heard in the form of the past participle ‘shafted’, this term is another example of a slang word literally meaning

to have sex with someone used metaphorically to mean humiliate or abase.

I tell you, we were well and truly shafted over that Abco deal.

Compare fuck; bugger; roger; screw

shafting n

an instance of extremely harsh, ruinous and/or unfair treatment. The term derives from the sexual senses of the verb to shaft.

shag1 vb

1. to have sex (with). A common vulgarism in Britain and Australia which is unknown in this sense in the USA. The word is an archaic relative of ‘shake’, which was used in a sexual sense from at least the 16th century. In Britain shag took over the taboo role in the 18th century. In modern usage the word is considered less offensive than fuck in male company, but more vulgar than other synonyms. Like ‘fuck’ it occurs in other forms, such as the noun shag, the intensifying adjective ‘shagging’ and phrases such as ‘shag off’.

‘When I was 17 I was obsessively in love with a girl who only liked me. It blighted my adolescence. I would have given anything to shag her.’

(Ben Elton, quoted in NME, March 1989)

2. American to depart, leave. The 1990s use of the term, which may be related to earlier uses of the word to denote a fast jitterbug-style dance or later a reluctant, shuffling walk, also occurs in the phrase ‘shag off/out’. By the 18th century shag had come to mean ‘move quickly’ in American speech.

shag2 n British

1.a sexual act or a sexual partner. See the verb form for origins.

2.a term of endearment in use among London financial traders in 2000, probably from earlier public-school usage

shagadelic adj

excellent. A jocular coinage from the sexual sense of shag and ‘psychedelic’ used, usually ironically, by US and UK teenagers since around 2000.

shagged out, shagged adj British exhausted, worn out. The vulgar origin of the phrase (tired out from sexual activity) is partially forgotten in the modern usage wherein the expression serves as a more robust version of knackered.

Listen. I really can’t make it, I’m feeling absolutely shagged.

shaggin’ wagon, shag-wagon n

a more vulgar term for passion wagon or ‘draggin’ wagon’. This form of the expression is heard in Britain and Australia.

Old Gregory turned up in a brand new shaggin’ wagon.

shag-monster n British

a promiscuous or sexually active person. The term can be used either pejoratively or appreciatively.

‘Lyrics like “We should both go to bed until we make each other sore”… have seen [singer Louise Wener] labelled a “sluttish shag-monster”…’’

(The Big Issue, 6 March 1995)

shake vb

1. British to alert, rouse, summon. This use of the word, obviously deriving from the literal shaking of someone to wake them, is now employed as part of police, underworld and working-class jargon.

‘The solicitors … We’ll shake them for you.’

(Flying Squad, British TV documentary, March 1989)

2. American to search or stop and harass (a suspect). The word, used by police and criminals, is a shortening of the more familiar shake down.

shake down vb American

1.to extort money from (someone), either face-to-face (usually by threats) or by blackmail

2.to search a person or premises. The phrase usually refers to an official search by police officers which may involve a degree of harassment or force.

shakedown n American

1.an act of extortion or blackmail

2.a search of a person or premises, usually by police officers

shamed-up adj British

humiliated, shamed. A ‘buzz-term’ among teenagers in the 1980s, from the admonitory catchphrase ‘take the shame!’. This playground phrase is from black slang.

shampoo n

champagne. A Sloane ranger and yuppie witticism of the 1980s. The word is often abbreviated to poo. In the USA preppies and others also use the terms.

shandy n British

a weakling, person unable or unwilling to take strong drink. Not to be confused with hand shandy.

shank n American

a homemade knife. A term used in prisons and by the members of street gangs since the 1950s. In standard English shank denotes the shaft or connecting rod of a tool or instrument.

sharking n British

pursuing members of the opposite sex. This item of Oxbridge slang of the 1990s often denotes aggressive or devious attempts at seduction, usually on the part of males. By 2004 it was heard across the UK.

Sharon n British

the female equivalent of a Kevin or Wayne. The name is used to designate a supposedly typical (and by implication uncultured) working-class young woman. These generic epithets were coined in the 1970s for the purpose of social stereotyping. (In 1965 Sharon was the tenth most popular Christian name for new-born girls in Britain.) A quintessential ‘common’ female, invariably with a cockney estuary English accent, typified by white trainers, loud clothing and much gold jewellery.

‘A thousand slavish Sharons copied Diana’s wedding look, as they did her flicked ’n’ sprayed hairstyle.’

(Judy Rumbold, Guardian, 11 December 1989)

sharpies n pl Australian

members of a short-lived teenage youth movement of the 1950s who were contemporaries of the bodgies and widgies. Sharpies were short-haired, aggressive and less flamboyant than the teddy boy- like bodgies.

shatter n British See top shatter

shat upon adj

humiliated, slighted, victimised or punished. Shat is a past tense of the verb to shit.

shedloads n British

a disguised version of the more vulgar shitloads, meaning a large quantity. The expression was popular among City of London traders in the late 1990s.

‘… how can a T & G sponsored prime minister break it to the union which gives his party shedloads of money that the marriage is over?’

(Private Eye, 11 July 1997)

sheeny n

a Jew. The term appeared in Britain in the early 19th century when it did not

necessarily have the offensive racist overtones it acquired in the 20th century. Many possible etymologies have been proposed for sheeny: the three most plausible are the German word schön (beautiful) as applied either to their children or to merchandise by Jews, the ‘sheen’ of dark hair or skin as perceived by Anglo-Saxons, or the Yiddish phrase a miesse meshina (‘an ugly fate or death’), a phrase supposedly common among Jews.

sheep-dip n

low-quality alcoholic drink

sheepdog n Australian

a brassière. The jocular usage, invariably heard in male speech, is based on the notion that, like the bra, the dog ‘rounds them up and keeps them together’.

sheepshagger n British

a rustic, bumpkin or primitive. A vulgarism heard since the 19th century.

‘Uni is over and I’ll never see you pathological sheepshaggers again!’

(Posted on online student blog, December 2004)

sheet n British

an official report. An item of prison jargon recorded in the 1990s in Brixton and Wandsworth prisons.

Sheila n Australian

a woman. This well-known Australianism, although old-fashioned, is still heard. It is an alteration of an earlier word shaler (meaning ‘young woman’), of Gaelic origin, which was used by Irish immigrants. The word became a generic term for females, the feminine counterpart of Paddy, and was altered to coincide with the female Christian name.

‘Cripes! I was nearly up shit creek that time. Now I’m stuck with this po-faced Sheila!’

(Barry Humphries and Nicholas Garland,

The Wonderful World of Barry McKenzie, 1988)

shell n American

1.a dollar. This usage may recall the use of cowries and other sea shells as currency, or come from the verb to ‘shell out’ (in which shell refers to the shell or pod containing seeds). Clams is a synonym.

2.a beer, beercan. This rare sense of the word may conceivably draw a comparison between empty beer cans and discarded (ammunition) shell cases.

shellacked adj

drunk. A term originating in the USA in the 1920s; ‘shellack’ (its standard meaning being to apply varnish) first meant to beat or punish; this was then extended to denote the effects of alcohol.

shellacking n

a beating, defeat. A humorous borrowing of the standard term meaning to slap on shellac, a resin used for varnishing and insulation. The slang sense arose in the USA where it is still heard; it is not unknown in British speech.

sherbert n British

an alcoholic drink. A term first heard in the raffish or jocular speech of the colonial era, since the late 1990s in use among adolescents.

sheriff n British

a fifty-pence coin. The nickname comes from the supposed resemblance to a western sheriff’s star.

Sherman (tank) n British

1.a native of the USA, Yank. A piece of rhyming slang playing on the name of the World War II vehicle.

2.an act of masturbation, a wank. A probably ephemeral piece of rhyming slang of the late 1980s, quoted for instance in Steve Bell’s If comic strip in the Guardian.

shibby1 adj American

excellent, attractive. A vogue term since 2000 when it featured in the US comedy film Dude, Where’s My Car? It is probably inspired by the noun form.

shibby2 n American

cannabis. The word is of uncertain origin but may be an alteration of the earlier chiba.

shickered, shikkered, shicker adj drunk. The word is used primarily in the USA and Australia. It is from shikker, the Yiddish word for inebriated, which itself is from the Hebrew shikor.

‘You’re stoned, Bazza!

Come off it – just a bit shicker.’

(Bazza Comes into His Own, cartoon by Barry Humphries and Nicholas Garland, 1988)

shif(t) vb British to run for it

shift vb, n Irish

(to have) sexual intercourse. The usage was explained to a British audience by

the stand-up comedian Jo Brand in her 1995 TV show.

shikse, shiksa n American

a non-Jewish female. A Yiddish term used by Jews of gentiles often, but nowadays not always, pejoratively.

shill n

a con-man’s accomplice. The word has been used since the 19th century to denote a decoy or agent planted in a crowd to stimulate trade or encourage spending. Nowadays it usually refers to a participant in a rigged card game or other fraud. The origin of the term is unclear; it is said to be based either on a proper name such as Shillibeer or on an archaic dialect form of ‘skill’.

shinaton n

a girl who gives a lot of oral sex. The term is probably an Afro-Caribbean pronunciation of ‘shinathon’, an imaginary event combining shiner(s), fellator(s) and marathon.

shine1 n American

a black person. This now dated, usually pejorative term from the early 20th century (used by Raymond Chandler among others when describing the Los Angeles low-life of the 1940s) is still occasionally heard. The origin of this usage is obscure; it may be inspired by the appearance of black skin or contrasting white teeth, or may even be a shortening of ‘shoe-shine’.

shine2 vb American

to snub, reject. The term is probably a back-formation of the earlier shined-on.

‘Let’s face it, she shined you.’

(California Man, US film, 1992)

shined-on adj American

ignored, disregarded. Its origin may be by analogy with mooning (showing one’s buttocks as a gesture of contempt) or connected with the noun shine, meaning a black person, hence a social inferior, or more poetically may derive from the image of the moon shining down with cold indifference.

I’m not going to be shined-on! I think I deserve some attention.

shiners n

a.fellatio

b.a girl giving oral sex

The term, heard among gang members, hip hop aficionados and schoolchildren in London since 2000, is probably in origin a shortening of ‘knob-shiner’.

shine the fireman’s helmet vb British to masturbate (a male) or fellate

‘I was having my fireman’s helmet shined.’

(Posted on Alaskan ‘flirting’ website, June 2005)

shirt-lifter n

a male homosexual. An Australian euphemism used pejoratively but usually humorously. The phrase originated in the 1960s and had been adopted by some British speakers by the late 1970s. (The Melbourne satirist Barry Humphries has frequently used the term and has coined ‘chemise-lifter’ as a lesbian counterpart.)

shit1 n

a.excrement. This word of Anglo-Saxon origin has parallels in other Germanic languages (e.g. in modern German Scheisse). It derives from an ancient common verb, imitative of the sound of defecation. In English shit is now a mild vulgarism, although in rustic speech it has been the standard term for centuries.

b.an act of defecation, usually in phrases such as ‘have/take a shit’

c.a contemptible person. This usage conveys real dislike or disapproval and has been common, particularly in upperand middle-class speech in Britain since the 1920s.

‘Tiny 19-year-old Mark Aldrich beat up two youths who called him “a little shit” – but the comment “could be appropriate” a judge said yesterday.’

(Daily Mirror, 10 September 1988)

d. an illicit drug, especially hashish. In the 1950s heroin users referred to their drug as shit; by the mid-1960s the word usually designated hashish (which is characteristically brown) or marihuana. When used in this context the word is synonymous with ‘stuff’ and carries virtually no pejorative overtones.

Hey, this is excellent shit, man.

‘P.S. I cannot get any shit, my friends have split to other lands, they are free.’

(Reader’s letter in Oz magazine, February 1970)

e.rubbish, something worthless or inferior

f.nonsense, lies or deceitful talk. This is a specific use of shit as something worthless, or simply a shortening of bullshit.

Come on, don’t give me that shit, I wasn’t born yesterday.

g. unnecessarily hostile behaviour or illtreatment

‘I’m definitely not going to take any more shit from any of them.’

(Recorded, disgruntled office worker, London, 2005)

shit2 vb

1. to defecate. The verb probably predates the noun form. Both seem to have existed in Old English, deriving from a common Germanic ancestor, itself cognate with the Greek skat- (later giving ‘scatological’). Used intransitively the verb is now probably rarer than phrases such as ‘have a shit’. (The usual past form in British English is ‘shat’, in American ‘shit’.)

2a. to deceive, bamboozle, confuse (someone)

2b. to browbeat or annoy (someone)

These transitive usages may originate as short forms of the verb bullshit, but have taken on separate identities as a designation, usually in American speech, of timewasting or harassment by lies or deceit.

shit3 adj

1. awful, inferior. A simple transference of the noun form, popular especially in British youth parlance of the 1980s.

a shit record

2. American excellent, admirable. In the hip language of the street, of rap and hip hop practitioners and their teenage imitators, shit has been used with this unexpected sense. The probable explanation is that it is a shortening of shit-hot.

shit a brick, shit bricks vb

to panic, be in a state of nervous apprehension. ‘Shit a brick!’ is sometimes used as an exclamation of surprise or irritation.

shit and derision n British

a terrible state of affairs, confusion, mess. A mainly middle-class term typically used ruefully or humorously.

shit-ass adj American

very unpleasant, worthless, contemptible. Used especially in Canadian English, in much the same way as shithouse in Australia.

shitbag n British

an obnoxious or unpleasant person. A term which was widespread in the 1960s but is now less common.

shitcan vb

a. Australian to denigrate, to rubbish. The word is used to signify the upbraiding or

insulting of someone who deserves to be humiliated.

b. American to throw away, reject

Both senses derive from the noun shitcan as a toilet receptacle or rubbish bin.

shite n British

a variant form of shit, heard particularly in northern English speech

shit-eating grin n

a facial expression showing extreme (usually malicious) satisfaction. Originally an Americanism, the expression is now also heard elsewhere.

‘I didn’t want to see the shit-eating grins on the cozzers’ faces.’

(Jimmy Robinson, released prisoner speaking on the BBC TV programme Panorama, 24 February 1997)

shitfaced adj American

drunk, helplessly or squalidly intoxicated. The term was particularly in vogue in the mid-1970s.

She was totally shitfaced. Let’s get shitfaced.

shit-fit n

a bout of anger or intense irritation, etc. The term probably originated in the US, but by the mid-1990s was common throughout the English-speaking world

‘Look at this mess! Lloyd is going to have a shit-fit.’

(A Passion for Murder, US film, 1993)

shit-for-brains n

a very stupid person. This term of abuse, deriving from an earlier rustic expression on the lines of ‘he/she must have shit-for-brains’, has been widespread in the USA and Australia since the 1970s. It is now sometimes used adjectivally, as in ‘a shit-for-brains idea’.

shithead n

1a. a despicably unpleasant or unfriendly person. This sense of the word has been predominant since the 1970s.

1b. a stupid or foolish person

2. a hashish smoker. This sense of the word was briefly current from the mid1960s, before being replaced by synonyms such as doper, etc. (Pothead was a less contentious or ambiguous synonym.)

shitheel n American

an unpleasant or obnoxious person. An embellished form of the milder and more common ‘heel’.

‘I suffer no such illusion, having had firsthand experience at the hands of that world-class misogynistic shitheel.’

(Posting on a Canadian blog, November 2004)

shit-hot adj

a.first-rate, excellent, powerful or dynamic

b.very keen, enthusiastic or punctilious. Shit here is used as an intensifier rather than a metaphor.

shithouse1 n

a.a toilet

b.a dirty or untidy place

shithouse2 adj

terrible, inferior, worthless. This elaboration of shit or shitty is particularly common in Australian speech.

shit-kicker n

1.a lowly menial, humble worker or rustic. An alternative to ‘shit-shoveller’ heard particularly in the USA and Australia.

2.a dynamic or energetic person

shit-kicking adj

wild, earthy, primitive. The word is used especially in the context of country or rock music and signals approval rather than criticism.

some stomping, howling, shit-kicking rhythm ’n’ blues

shit-licked adj

drunk. A variant form of the earlier shitfaced.

shit-list n American

a real or imaginary black list; either as kept by organisations or individuals

Jerry’s top of my shit-list this week.

I think I’m on the shit-list of every bar in town.

shit-load, shitloads n

an enormous amount or quantity. The term originated in US speech, but by the mid-1990s was heard throughout the English-speaking world. Shedloads is a British euphemism.

We’re in shitloads of trouble here.

‘What about the Mets? I bet you won a shit-load of money!’

(Bad Lieutenant, US film, 1994)

shit oneself vb

to be overcome with fear or panic

shit on one’s own doorstep vb British to do something damaging or unpardonable which will rebound upon oneself or one’s friends; to ruin one’s own environment. This expression, like the politer

‘foul the nest’, has equivalents in most European languages (normally involving beds rather than doorsteps).

shit on wheels n American

an extremely adept or adroit person. The phrase is based on the notion of ‘a slippery customer’.

shit-parade n American

an alternative form of shit-list shits, the n

a.diarrhoea

b.a feeling of annoyance, disgust or bitter resentment. This figurative sense of the preceding vulgarism seems to be acquiring a separate identity, usually in the form ‘it/he/she gives me the shits’.

shit-scared adj British

terrified. An intensive form of the standard adjective.

shit-sheet n American

a police file (recording criminal activity) or school report (particularly one recording poor results)

shit-storm n American

a spectacular fuss and/or mess shitter, the n

1.a toilet

2.the anus

shitty adj

a. unpleasant, unfair. The word may mean merely bad or nasty, but usually carries overtones of resentment on the part of the speaker.

That was a really shitty thing to do.

b.inferior, poor quality

That cassette machine’s got shitty sound.

shiv n

a knife. An alternative rendering of chiv, a Romany word used in British underworld and low-life milieus since the 17th century. In the 20th century the word was used (also in the USA) to mean any bladed weapon, including homemade knives and razors. Shiv was also used as a verb, particularly in the argot of street gangs of the 1950s and early 1960s.

shizit n, vb American

a disguised or playfully altered form of shit

shizzle my nizzle, shizza my nizza exclamation

an expression of strong agreement, an alteration or disguising of ‘for sure, my nigga’, using the vogue combining form - izzle, recorded in 2004

‘s’, has overtones of intimacy and affection rather than malicious gossip.

shmuck n See schmuck shmutter n See schmutter

shnide adj British

snide (in both its standard sense of sneering and its slang sense of counterfeit). This quasi-Yiddish pronunciation has been popular with the hip young and some working-class speakers since the 1950s; other words are having their pronunciation altered in a similar fashion (shmarmy and shmeg, for instance). In this case the speakers may be reproducing the original pronunciation (see snide for the origins of the word).

See also jekyll

shnorrer n

a cadger, scrounger or hustler. This is a Yiddish word occasionally used by nonJewish speakers, particularly in the USA, to refer to a sponger or parasite. It derives from the German verb schnorren, meaning to beg (itself from schnurren, meaning to purr or whirr – the sound of a beggar’s entreaties or their musical accompaniment).

shocking out n

dancing. The term has been used in hip hop and clubbing milieus since 2000.

shoddy adj British

excellent, admirable. A reversal of the standard use of the term, shoddy in this sense was a fashionable item of schoolchildren’s slang in 2002 and 2003.

shoeing n British

fighting, brawling, attacking. In playground usage in 2003.

shonk, shonker n British

1.the nose, especially a large and prominent one. A synonym of conk, this is derived from the following sense.

2.a Jew. An offensive, racist term dating from the 19th century, when shonniker was a Yiddish word denoting a pedlar or small-time tradesperson.

shonkie, shonky n, adj

1.(a) Jew(ish). Like shonk and shonker, these words derive from shonniker, an archaic Yiddish term for a peddler or small-time tradesperson.

2.American (a person who is) mean or grasping

shoo-in n American

a certainty; a candidate or contestant who is certain to win. The term is inspired by the idea of a horse which

merely has to be ushered across the finishing line. The phrase is a common colloquialism in the USA which was picked up by some British journalists in the second half of the 1980s.

shoomers n pl British

patrons of clubs playing acid house music. Shoom was the name of one such club in London in 1988 when the cult was at its height (and before the orbital raves of 1989 became established). The word probably evokes the rush of euphoria experienced by users of the drug ecstasy.

shoot vb

1.also shoot off to ejaculate. The word has been used in this sense since the 19th century.

2.also shoot up to inject. A drug user’s term, widespread since the late 1950s.

3.to leave hurriedly. A word used in Britain mainly by young people since the 1970s. It is probably a shortening of ‘shoot off’.

I’ve got to shoot, I’ll see you later.

shoot! exclamation American

an inoffensive euphemism for shit used as an exclamation since the 19th century

shooter n British

a gun. Neither a colourful nor particularly imaginative piece of slang, but the only term with any real currency, as opposed to the inventions of crime fiction.

‘Standing over two corpses with a hot shooter in your hand.’

(Twinkle, Twinkle Little Spy, Len Deighton, 1976)

shooting gallery n

a place where drug users gather to inject themselves. The word has been applied to open spaces, pubs and communal flats for instance. It is an addict’s pun which the police have also adopted both in Britain and the USA.

‘Sam got his leg broken recently in some mysterious street-corner dispute – heading for the shooting gallery they call the Chateau Luzerne.’

(Sunday Times, 10 September 1989)

shoot one’s bolt/load/wad vb

to ejaculate. These terms for the male orgasm have been in use since the 19th century.

shoot one’s cookies vb American

an alternative form of toss one’s cookies/ tacos

shoot the breeze/bull vb to chat inconsequentially

‘They were just standing around shooting the breeze when it all went off.’

(Recorded, US student, Palo Alto, October 2003)

shoot the shit vb American

to talk, gossip. A vulgarisation of shoot the breeze/bull.

shoot through vb Australian

a.to die. An expression probably first introduced to an English audience via the lyrics of Rolf Harris’s hit record ‘Tie Me Kangaroo Down, Sport’.

b.to leave, depart. The phrase has been in use in Australia since before World War II and is still heard.

shoot up vb

to inject (a narcotic)

shootzie adj British

fashionable, chic. This item of 1960s London parlyaree, recorded in the TV documentary Out in July 1992, is of uncertain origin. It may derive from chutzpah.

shop vb British

to inform on (someone). The noun shop meant prison in 16th-century British underworld parlance. The verb form was first used to mean imprison, then (since the first decades of the 19th century) to cause to be imprisoned. The word has become a well-known colloquialism since the 1960s; in school and prison slang it has largely been overtaken by the synonymous grass.

short-and-curlies, the n pl British

the pubic hair(s). The expressions ‘got/ grabbed/caught by the short-and-curl- ies’, meaning to be rendered helpless or vulnerable, are common vulgarisms.

short arm n

the penis. A euphemism heard especially in the armed services; short arm is an archaic variation of ‘small arm’ in the sense of a handgun. ‘Arm’ also reflects the common notion of the penis as a limb. ‘Short-arm inspection’ was the medical examination for symptoms of venereal disease.

shortarse n

a small person. A contemptuous term heard particularly in London working-

class speech and in Australia since the early years of the 20th century.

short-eyes n American

an underworld and prisoners’ term for a child molester; the equivalent of the British nonce. The exact significance of the words is unclear; the phrase may be related to ‘shut-eyes’, an archaic term for a sex offender.

short hairs n pl

the pubic hair(s). A euphemism in use since the 19th century. It is most often heard figuratively in phrases such as ‘they’ve got us by the short hairs’ (i.e. at their mercy, rendered helpless).

short out vb American

to lose control of oneself, lose one’s temper, ‘blow a fuse’. The image is of an electrical system developing a short circuit.

He tries to keep his cool, but every now and again he shorts out.

short-stuff n American

a small person. An affectionate or condescending form of address almost invariably said to a child by an adult.

shorty n

a girlfriend. The word is often used as a term of endearment by males, especially in black speech since 2000.

shot n

an injection.

See also hotshot

shottie n British

a gun. A term used by young street-gang members in London since around 2000.

shotting n British

dealing drugs. An item of black streettalk used especially by males, recorded in 2003. Synonyms are cutting, serving up.

shout1 n British

1. a round of drinks or the ordering thereof

It’s my shout.

2. a message indicating an emergency, request for help, etc. (usually by radio). A piece of jargon used by police and the emergency services.

shout2 vb Australian

1.also shout at the floor to vomit

2.to buy (someone) a drink, to treat someone to something

‘Real generous…like giving me a job when I was stoney and shouting me all them chilled stubbies the other day.’ (The Adventures of Barry McKenzie, cartoon strip by Barry Humphries and Nicholas Garland, 1988)

shrapnel n British

small change, coins. A vogue term among adolescents in the later 1990s. Unsurprisingly, the term may have come from the armed forces. Partridge has recorded that New Zealand soldiers used the word to refer to tattered banknotes in World War I. Smash is a synonym from the same period.

shreddies n pl British

revolting, tattered (shredded) underwear. A mainly middle-class usage among students and schoolchildren, punning on the name of a popular breakfast cereal. The term has been heard since the 1960s. It may possibly derive from the British rugby players’ practice of ‘shredding’. This involves an attempt to remove a pair of underpants from a male victim by pulling them upwards rather than downwards.

shrimping n American

sucking someone’s toes for the purposes of sexual gratification, a jargon term among pornographers, prostitutes, etc.

shrink n

a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst. Shrink is a shortening of the earlier headshrinker, which was imported from America to Britain and Australia in the 1960s.

‘We called in a consultant, a psychiatrist.

Ashrink?

Ahighly respected doctor.’

(The Dancer’s Touch, US film, 1989)

shrooms n pl

magic mushrooms. This abbreviated form describing hallucinogenic mushrooms probably originated in British adolescent slang in the 1990s.

Compare rooms

shtenkie n, adj British

(a person considered) obnoxious, contemptible. The term is a quasi-Yiddish deformation of ‘stink(y)’ and was popular among acid house aficionados and ravers from the 1990s.

shtick n

a. a performance, term, act or routine, in the context of the entertainment business

b.a piece of (repeated) behaviour characteristic of a particular person

c.a gimmick, trick or ruse

The Yiddish word shtik, from Middle German stücke: piece, was passed via American showbiz slang into fashionable speech and journalese in the 1980s.

shtum adj

silent, unspeaking. Most often heard in the phrase ‘keep/stay shtum’: be quiet. A Yiddish term from the German stumm: dumb, which entered London working-class slang via Jewish influence in the East End.

shtup vb

to have sex (with). This Yiddish word meaning press or push (oneself) is from the German stupsen (push). In American slang it has come to mean copulate, in which sense it is occasionally heard in fashionable British speech since the 1980s.

‘As any regular reader of Marie Claire magazine knows, some four out of five young French women would rather shop than shtup.’

(Julie Burchill, Elle magazine, December 1987)

‘The big question is, did they shtup or didn’t they?’

(Posted on online messageboard, 15 February 2005)

shubbs n British

a party, dance, rave. A term from Caribbean speech, also heard in the UK since 2000, especially among younger speakers.

shufti n British

a look, glance. The word is Arabic and was imported by armed service personnel before World War II.

shutzie adj British See shootzie

shway, shwey adj American

nice, elegant, attractive. The term has been popular among younger speakers since 2000.

shyster n

a dishonest, avaricious, contemptible person. The term is usually applied to unscrupulous professionals, particularly lawyers, who were the original subjects of the epithet in the USA in the mid19th century. The etymology of shyster is open to several interpretations; shicer was a 19th-century anglicisation of the German scheisser (literally ‘shitter’); ‘shy’ was used in the 19th century col-