Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (137 page)

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
shit-loads
, 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.

Shelta
See
cant

shenk
n British

a knife. A variant form of
shank
in use among gang members in 2010.

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
.

shibby
¹
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.

shibby
²
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

shiffed, shifted
adj British

arrested, detained by the police. The terms are used by street-gang members and their imitators.

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'.

shine
¹
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'.

shine
²
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.)

shit
¹
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 upper- and 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 ill-treatment

‘I'm definitely not going to take any more shit from any of them.'
(Recorded, disgruntled office worker, London, 2005)

shit
²
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 time-wasting or harassment by lies or deceit.

shit
³
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