Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (113 page)

1b.
extremely enthusiastic or enamoured

2.
British
good. As heard since 2000, the word is probably a shortening of
the mutt's nuts
rather than the colloquial term for crazy.

nuts
²
n pl

the testicles. A metaphorical use of the word which serves as a more acceptable euphemism for
balls
.

nuts!
exclamation

an exclamation of defiance which may be used without offence, unlike the synonymous
balls
. The most famous instance of this (typically American) expression was General McAuliffe's one-word riposte to the German army's request for surrender at Bastogne in World War II.

nutter
n British

a maniacal, unrestrained, unpredictable person. Often said in awe or grudging admiration of the subject's energy and capabilities.

‘He then began saying I would get into trouble. “That boy of yours looks a nutter to me!”'
(Joe Orton's diary, 12 May 1967)

nutty
adj

1.
crazy, absurd, eccentric. A usage which slightly pre-dates the almost synonymous
nuts
. By the 1960s it was considered a well-established colloquialism.

2.
Jamaican
natty
(in the standard and patois senses), smart and spirited. Caribbean English has retained the 19th-century British sense of dandified. The word was applied by the white British pop group, Madness to themselves in a punning reference to their ‘craziness' and the inspiration they gained from black music.

3.
British

excellent, exciting. An allpurpose term of approval in use among schoolchildren, clubbers and
fashionistas
from the late 1990s.

nyaff
n Scottish

an irritating or obnoxious person. The term is supposed to be echoic in origin, and is based on the irritating sound of a dog or a small child.

nyam (up)
vb British

to eat. The term was heard in black British speech in the early 1990s. It was thought to be echoic, but possibly originates from a West African language. By 2013 the adjective
nyam
, meaning delicious, was in use among teenagers across the Anglo-sphere.

nympho
n
a promiscuous woman. The word is a shortening of ‘nymphomaniac'. The word has often been used by schoolchildren since the 1950s.

O
n

opium, in the jargon of drug users

oats
n pl See
get one's oats

oatsy
adj

spirited, assertive, restive or
feisty
. A coinage derived from the earlier phrase to ‘feel one's oats'.

obbo
n British

observation by police officers, surveil-lance. An item of police slang recorded by the
Evening Standard
magazine, February 1993, and popularised by its use in the many TV dramas based on police work broadcast in the later 1990s.

obv
¹
adj
,
adv British

short for ‘obvious(ly)'. An abbreviated form in use among middle-class speakers from around 2000.

Compare
unforch

obv
²
, obvi
adj American

obvious, apparent. The abbreviated forms were recorded in campus usage in 2012.

It's totally obvi that Deelia is hot for you.

Compare
obvz

obvz, obvs
adj British

obviously. The abbreviated forms, recorded among young adults in South London in 2011, may be written in texting or online or spoken. The usage has been adopted by journalists for spoof articles imitating the gushing of fashionable older speakers, too.

Compare
obv

ocean-going
combining form British

an allpurpose intensifier used to prefix nouns, as in ‘an ocean-going shit' (an extremely obnoxious person). The usage is inspired by such terms as ‘ocean-going yacht', denoting a larger and more powerful version of the thing in question.
Born-again
is used in a similar way.

ocker
n Australian

a working-class male, especially one epitomising the more boorish Australian attributes. This word, which seems to be related to the British
oik
by an unrecorded process, has a resonance beyond its simple definition. It has overtones of the American ‘good ole boy'. ‘Ockerism' and ‘ockerdom' describe the cult or syndrome of male comradeship, beer-drinking and lack of refinement embodied in such cultural icons as the comedian Paul Hogan's ‘Hoag' character and the Test cricketer Merv Hughes. (
Alf
is a less well-known synonym for ocker.).

‘Paul Hogan …the archetypal Aussie Ocker.'
(Photo caption,
Southern Cross
magazine, July 1989)

ockerina, ocarina
n Australian
a female
ocker
. A play on words heard occasionally.

O.D., o.d.
n
,
vb

(to) overdose. The abbreviation replaced the full form in the 1960s among ‘counter-culture' and street drug users. It is still in use and is sometimes extended to refer to a surfeit of something innocuous.

Oh God, I've completely o.d.'d on those chocolates.
‘Billy O.D'd on Drano on the night that he was wed.'
(#8220;People Who Died”, written and recorded by Jim Carroll, 1981)

oddball
n
,
adj

(a person who is) eccentric, nonconformist or an outsider. An Americanism which has been established in British and American speech since the 1950s. The origin of the expression probably lies in pool playing or another sport.

She's a bit of an oddball.
That's thoroughly oddball behaviour.

odds and sods
n pl British

a rhyming vulgarisation of ‘odds and ends'

odds it
vb British

to ‘play the odds', take a risk or chance. A piece of London working-class terminology,
used particularly by police officers and members of the underworld.

You're oddsin' it a bit, aren't you?
I can't be sure, we'll just have to odds it.

ofay
n American

a white person. The word is said to be a
backslang
version of ‘foe' in black American slang of the late 1960s. Another proposed etymology is the Yoruba word
ofé
, meaning a ju-ju or charm. The word probably originated earlier in the 20th century in the immigrant underworld as a code reference to the police and other authority figures. It is sometimes encountered in the phrase ‘ixnay ofay(s)', meaning ‘no whites'.

‘Nice integrated neighbourhood, ofays, Arabs, Chaldeans, a few colored folks. Ethnic, man.'
(
The Switch
, Elmore Leonard, 1978)

off
¹
vb American

to kill. A word popular at the time of the Vietnam War when ‘off the pigs' was a slogan much chanted by militant protesters. The term, possibly derived from
bump off
, was picked up by British speakers and enjoyed a brief vogue in the early 1970s. It is still heard occasionally, especially in the verb form ‘off oneself' (to commit suicide).

‘Isn't he the dude on trial for offing the undercover cop?'
(
The Last Innocent Man
, US film, 1987)

off
²
n British

a fight. A playground term also used by teenage gangs.

Quick, there's going to be an off.

offie
n British

an off-licence, liquor store

off-key
adj British

ugly, unattractive, badly dressed. One of a number of terms, including
bungled
,
cake-up
,
cruttess
, in vogue among street-gang members,
hip hop
aficionados and students in the UK since 2000.

off one's block/chump/crust/head/nut/onion
adj

mad, crazy. These phrases are all elaborations of the well-established colloquialism, ‘off one's head' (heard since the mid-19th century). The terms are sometimes extended to mean intoxicated by drugs or drink, more usually denoted by phrases beginning with ‘out of', such as
out of one's head
.

off one's face
adj

completely drunk or under the influence of drugs. A variant of ‘off one's head'. The usage arose in Australian speech, but by the mid-1990s was in common use in Britain among younger speakers. The variant ‘off one's case' is also used by prison inmates in the UK.

“‘I went high at university!' he said reasonably. ‘Used to get really on my face in fact …'”
‘“Off! Off! Dad, it's off your face”, Mouche screeched from the bed.'
(
Girls' Night Out
, Kathy Lette, 1989)

‘… inside, we were buzzing nicely… I was off my face: 1995 had come early.'
(
Independent
, 24 January 1995)

off one's jaw
adj British

drunk. A variant form of the earlier
off one's head
/
face
recorded in 2002.

off one's pickle
adj British

drunk. A variant form of the earlier
off one's head
/
face
recorded in 2002.

off one's trolley
adj British

deranged, unstable, crazy. A variation on the
off one's block
theme, which has been popular in British speech since the 1970s. The original image evoked may be of a child losing control of a cart or scooter, or of a patient falling from a mobile stretcher or frame.

off-side
adj British

unfair, improper behaviour. An upper- and middle-class term of disapproval, deriving from various field sports.

off the hook
adj American

a.
excellent

b.
terrible

The expression, heard since 2000, probably originated in black speech. It is sometimes altered to ‘off the
hizzle
'.

off the wall
adj American

eccentric, unusual,
way-out
. A phrase (possibly inspired by the unpredictable trajectory of a ball or an ice-hockey puck rebounding from a wall) which has been adopted outside the USA, usually in connection with zany and/or creatively original ideas or behaviour.

O.G.
n American

‘original gangster': an older and respected gang member. A term from the code of the Los Angeles street gangs of the 1980s.

ogens
n pl American

female breasts. The name of the small spherical variety of melons is used figuratively, sometimes altered to
Hogans
.

oggle
vb British

a humorous or simply mispronounced version of the verb to ‘ogle', usually in the
sense of ‘eye lasciviously'. A middle-class colloquialism.

oggle-rye
n British

a.
an eye

b.
an eyelash

c.
an eyebrow

A
parlyaree
term recorded since the 1960s, in use particularly among London
gays
and transvestites. It combines the verb
oggle
(a deformation of ‘ogle') and a nonsense syllable to provide the rhyme.

ohno-second
n

a realisation of error, sudden panic, in e.g. medical slang. The expression mimics technical terms such as nanosecond. It describes ‘…the moment you realise you've dropped that blood sample it took six stabs to get'. (Recorded,
British Medical Journal
online, 2002).

-oid
suffix

the suffix, seen in slang since the late 1960s, confers a sense of the pseudo-scientific or pathological on the preceding word or part of a word. It is invariably also pejorative, and as such performs as a negative version of the neutral ‘-ish' or ‘-esque'. Examples are ‘Ramboid', ‘bozoid' (from
bozo
), ‘trendoid' and
zomboid
.

oik
n British

1.
a vulgar, coarse, boorish or socially inferior person. This term was, and still is, applied by public schoolboys (rarely by girls) to local children or those attending state schools. It is also sometimes used self-effacingly or ironically by working-class males to refer to themselves. The word's origin is obscure (one suggestion is that it was an imitation of the sound of unsophisticated speech), but seems to lie in the 19th century; it is almost certainly cognate with the 20th-century Australian term
ocker
, also denoting a working-class male. Evelyn Waugh used the word, in his diary entry of 7 January 1920, when referring to his host as a ‘wizened, pleasant little oik'.

‘I'm constantly amazed that a couple of oiks like me and Gray have managed to make it.'
(Recorded, advertising executive, London, 1986)