Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (119 page)

vagina. The word occurs in Hindi and Panjabi.
Fudi
is an alternative spelling.

piano
adj British

faint, delicate, ‘under the weather' or indis-posed. This upper-class expression derives from the Italian musical term
piano
, which is an instruction to play or sing softly. The British speaker's pronunciation, in imitation of the original Italian, is ‘pee-aah-no'.

‘Please don't disturb her, she seems to be feeling a little piano today.'
(Recorded, hostess, Dorset, 1974)

pickled
adj

drunk. A fairly inoffensive term, usually heard in the speech of the middle-aged or elderly.

‘I sat next to Pat Collins who is a very intelligent and delightful woman. I felt sorry that she had George Brown, completely pickled, on the other side of her.'
(Tony Benn's Diaries, 14 October 1969)

picni, pickney
n

a child. The term is Caribbean dialect, a more recent variant form of the often racist
‘picaninny', itself from the Portuguese
pequenino
, meaning tiny.

piddle
¹
vb British

to urinate. A childish or humorous-sounding word, this is nonetheless one of Britain's oldest ‘non-respectable' words in current use.

piddle
²
n British

urine or an act of urination. Piddle is etymologically related to puddle and to piddling meaning insignificant or trifling. It has been used as the name of small rivers in county districts and seems to have had a colloquial meaning of ‘small water' or ‘insignificant scrap' before its narrowing to the modern sense during the 18th and 19th centuries.

‘Piddles were done out of the back window last night, standing on the bed.'
(Spike Milligan,
Adolf Hitler; My Part in His Downfall
, 1971)

pie
n British

the vagina. The term was in use among London students in 2008.

piece
¹
n

1.
American
a gun. An underworld euphemism.

2.
a graffiti artist's
oeuvre
. A shortening of ‘piece of work' or ‘masterpiece' and forming part of the graffiti subculture lexicon of the 1980s.

‘Kids do it mainly for the clothes – jeans or trainers, or to buy cans of spray paint to do pieces (graffiti).'
(Teenage mugger,
Observer
, 22 May 1988)

3.
British
a girlfriend, female. An item of black street-talk used especially by males, recorded in 2003.

my piece

4.
British
penis. Used by teenagers and young adults, e.g. at Redbridge College, Essex, in 2010.

piece
²
, piece of ass
n American

a woman (or, less often, a man) considered as a sexual object. Piece has been employed in a similar sexual context, invariably referring unromantically to a woman, since the 15th century. The various phrases such as ‘piece of ass',
piece of tail
, etc. are probably more recent, arising, like
bit of fluff
, in the 19th century.

piece of piss/pudding
n British

something easy to accomplish, presenting no problems, a pushover. Both terms are variants on the common colloquialism ‘a piece of cake'.

piece of tail
n

an alternative form of
piece of ass

pieces
n pl British See
do one's nut/block/crust/pieces/taters

pie-eater
n

a fat and/or greedy person. The derisive terms, used by adolescents in particular, coincided with national concerns over obesity in the US and UK since 2002.
Pie-wagon
was a synonym heard in the US in 2004.

pie-hole
n American

the mouth. A humorous usage heard among adolescents and featured in the US film,
Sleepwalkers
, 1992.
Hum-hole
and the earlier British
cakehole
are synonyms.

piff
¹
n British

nonsense. A 1980s shortening of the colloquial ‘piffle', heard among adolescents.

a load of piff

piff
²
, piffy
n
,
adj

(something) excellent, impressive,
cool
. The term originally referred to a powerful strain of cannabis, but by the mid 2000s had become a widespread allpurpose term of approval among young speakers.

piffy
adj British

dubious, doubtful, suspect. A middle-class usage, often said disdainfully or superciliously. Its origin is obscure; it does not appear to be related to piffling in the sense of insignificant, but may be influenced by ‘iffy' or ‘piffle'.

pig
n

1.
a policeman or woman. An offensive term that gained its greatest currency in the 1960s in the USA whence it was reim-ported into Britain. (It was used in the same sense in the late Victorian underworld.)

‘Today's pig is tomorrow's bacon.'
(Anti-war protestors' and demonstrators' slogan of the 1960s)

2a.
a girl. A usage from the argot of street gangs,
beatniks
, etc. since the 1950s. Surprisingly, in these contexts the word is not necessarily pejorative.

2b.
American
an ugly, repellent girl. A term current in the late 1980s in US colleges, where ‘Pig of the Year/Week' contests took place and the unwitting winner was presented with a prize.

3.
a sexist male, as characterised by feminists. A shortening of the catchphrase ‘male chauvinist pig' (also rendered as
MCP
).

4.
a segment of an orange

These subsenses evoke the familiar images of the pig as gluttonous and disgusting or round and chubby.

pigeon
n American

a worthless female. In hip hop and
rap
parlance since the 1990s.

pigging
adj British

an intensifying adjective used as a milder substitute for
fucking
. Pigging has the merit of being able to be broadcast. It is used, often with vehemence, by both men and, particularly, women.

I told him to take his pigging ‘peace offering' and get lost.

pig it
vb British

to behave in a disgusting manner. The expression may apply to living in filthy surroundings, acting in a slovenly way or ‘slumming'.

pig Latin
n

a synonym for
backslang
, or a means of coining slang terms by the rearranging of syllables.
Ixnay
is an example.

piglet
n Australian

1.
an unattractive teenage girl

2.
See
pig

pig off
vb

to leave, go away. A euphemism for more offensive terms such as
piss off
, etc., usually heard in the form of an imperative. It is often used by women who wish to express themselves forcefully without obscenity.

‘I finally got fed up and told him to pig off.'
(Recorded, female teacher, London, 1989)

pig out
vb

to eat excessively and/or messily, to behave in an outrageous or obsessive way. This racier version of the colloquial ‘pig (oneself)', meaning to overindulge, probably originated in the USA and was established in Britain during the later 1960s.

pig's, pig's ear
n British

1.
beer. A London rhyming-slang term that is still heard. (The dismissive exclamatory phrase ‘in a pig's ear!' is unconnected, being a euphemism for ‘in a pig's arse!').

I'll have a pint of pig's.

2.
an alternative version of
pig's break-fast/arse

pig's breakfast/arse/ear
n British

a mess, an outrageous failure, a complete disaster. Most often heard in statements such as ‘you've made a right pig's breakfast of that!'.

piker
n American

a mean, tightfisted person; a
welcher
on a bet or a shirker. A now obsolescent word, related distantly to the British
pikey
, or from an abbreviation of ‘turnpike', piker occurred in the writings of Raymond Chandler in the 1940s. It originally referred to the unreliability of vagrants or itinerants.

pikey, pikie
n British

a gypsy or vagrant. The term properly denotes one of the travelling people who lives in a settlement, such as a member of a family of hop-pickers. The precise origins of these terms (and the American
piker
) are unclear because of the convergence of two similar senses of ‘pike'; the first is a toll road as in turnpike, the second is an archaic British verb meaning to depart or travel. In 2004 pikey was one of the terms used as a synonym for
chav
.

pikeys' wedding
n British

a brawl. The term was posted on the b3ta website in 2004.

pill
n

1.
British
a ball. A schoolboy term of the 1950s.

‘If I pla there is dead silence becos i never hit the pill at all they are all air shots chiz.'
(Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle,
Back in the Jug Agane
, 1959)

2. pills
British
the testicles; by extension from the above sense

3.
British
a foolish or stupid, annoying person. A shortening of
pillock
.

4.
South African
a
joint
. Recorded as an item of Sowetan slang in the
Cape Sunday Times
, 29 January 1995.

pill-head
n

an amphetamine user or addict

pilling
adj

under the influence of an illicit drug or drugs, not necessarily in pill form

pillock
n British

a foolish or stupid, annoying person. A vulgar but not taboo term of abuse which had existed in British slang usage since the 1950s (its exact date of origin is undetermined), coming into vogue in the mid-1970s. Various etymologies have been proposed for the word; ‘pillicock' was a late medieval term for the penis, sometimes used as an expression of endearment or affectionate abuse; pillocks has also been explained as a rural term for rabbit droppings, or as a synonym for the testicles (
pills
) employing the diminutive or affec-tionate
suffix ‘-ocks' (as in the case of
balls
and
bollocks
).

pillow-biter
n

a male homosexual, particularly a passive partner in sodomy. This expression probably originated in Australia, where it is common. It was introduced to the British public during the trial of Jeremy Thorpe (accused of plotting the murder of a male model, Norman Scott, in 1974) by the satirical magazine
Private Eye
.

pill-popper
n

a user of amphetamines or tranquillisers

pimp
¹
, pimped (out)
adj

exciting, fashionable, admirable. Vogue terms among hip hop aficionados and US teenagers since 2000, from black street culture's elevation of the pimp as a style icon.

pimp
²
vb

to embellish, make gaudy, customise. The term, originating in US hip hop slang of the 1990s, was popularised by the TV series featuring makeovers for old cars,
Pimp My Ride
.

pimp (someone) (over)
vb American

to deceive, cheat someone

Man. I got pimped that time.
He pimped us over good.

pimp-juice
n American

1.
masculine allure. An imaginary or intangible quality possessed by some males. The term has become popular since 2000. The female equivalent is
milkshake
.

Damn, that boy got pimp-juice.

2.
semen

pimps
n
,
adj British

(something) very easy, a pushover. A word used by young schoolchildren from the late 1980s, particularly when showing off or boasting. The word is usually used in an exclamation such as ‘that's pimps!' or ‘it's pimps!', meaning ‘there's nothing to it'. There seems to be no relation between this term and the standard English word for a procurer or the archaic use of pimp to mean sneak or inform upon.

pimpsy, pipsy
adj British

easily accomplished, no trouble. A variant of
pimps
used typically by middle-class schoolchildren.

pinch
vb
,
n

(to make) an arrest. An underworld and police term on both sides of the Atlantic.

pinch a loaf, pinch one off
vb American
to defecate. The phrases are part of male
toilet-talk
.

pineapple
n Australian See
rough end of the pineapple, the