Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (14 page)

the female genitals. A term heard on campus since 2000, it may be an alteration of bunch.

bay
¹
n British

£1. The term has been in ‘street' usage since 2000.

20 bays
I just need a bay for the machine.

bay
²
n American

a term of endearment towards the opposite sex, recorded in 2010, from ‘baby'

bayden
adj British

rich, financially solvent. The youth slang term of uncertain derivation was in use, in South East London e.g., from around 2007.

baz, bazz
n British

an outsider, misfit or bumpkin. One of many synonyms for
chav
,
steek
, etc. popular in 2003 and 2004.

bazeracked
adj British

drunk. A term in use since 2000, heard especially in South West England.

bazillion
n American

a very large number or quantity. An alternative form of
zillion
,
squillion
and
gazillion
.

‘There are about a bazillion poems about trees.'
(
Clarissa Explains It All
, US TV comedy, 1994)

bazooka'd
adj British

drunk. One of the many synonyms based on the notion of the drunkard as ruined, destroyed, etc.

bazumas, bazungas
n pl

female breasts. Supposedly humorous coinages (also rendered in other forms such as
gazungas
,
mezoomas
, etc.) which may have originated in an elaboration of ‘bosom'.

bazza
n South African

a friend, fellow gang member. Recorded as an item of Sowetan slang in the
Cape Sunday Times
, 29 January 1995.

BBM
vb
,
n British

(to send or exchange) instant messages on the Blackberry mobile phone system. The abbreviation was used by urban rioters in August 2011.

B-boy
n American

a participant in
hip hop
street culture. This vogue term (the female counterpart is
fly-girl
) became widespread around 1982, but was first coined in the late 1970s. The initial probably stood for ‘brother' as a term of address, or for ‘breakdancer'.

beak
n

1.
the nose. Beak has been used in this obvious sense since at least the beginning of the 19th century, although other terms, such as
hooter
,
bugle
,
conk
, etc. are more popular. In Irish speech the word is also used for the mouth or face.

2.
a person in authority, especially a judge or schoolmaster. This old usage is now obsolete in American English, but is retained in Britain in public-school slang and in the expression ‘up before the beak' (appearing before a magistrate or someone else sitting in judgment). Attempts have been made to derive this meaning of beak from a Celtic term for judgment, but the more obvious derivation
is from the intrusive beak (the nose and/or mouth) of authority.
Tatler
magazine reported in August 1989 that beak was still the standard Etonian slang for a schoolmaster.

‘Finally the beak turn his beetling brow to them and his xpression [sic] become suddenly soft, his stern eye mild.'
(Geoffrey Willans and Ronald Searle,
Back in the Jug Agane
, 1959)

3.
cocaine

4.
fellatio

Senses 3 and 4 have both been in use since 2000.

beamer
n American

a BMW car. A
yuppie
nickname.

beam me up, Scotty!
exclamation

a request for
crack
or another stimulating drug. The catchphrase, from the 1970s TV series
Star Trek
, has been used since 2000 in
rap
lyrics.

bean-bag
n British

a mild term of abuse among younger schoolchildren. Bean bags were used in throwing games and sports.

beaner, bean, bean-eater
n American

a Hispanic American, a Mexican or
Chicano
. A 1970s and 1980s term, highly offensive in the USA, which refers to poor Latin Americans' diet of
frijoles
or refried beans.

beanie
n

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

beans
n pl American

dollars. A humorous synonym possibly influenced by the colloquialism ‘a hill of beans', meaning something worth very little.

‘At least we're sitting on around a hundred beans from my brilliant idea.'
(
Planes, Trains and Automobiles
, US film, 1987)

bear
n

1.
American
a police officer, especially in the vocabulary of CB radio. This usage derives from the US Forest Services' fire-warning posters showing ‘Smokey the Bear' in the uniform of a ranger. It was adopted by CB enthusiasts in the mid-1970s.

2.
in
gay
terminology, a heavily built male typically exhibiting much body hair. The term is also used by heterosexuals as a (usually ironic) term of endearment to males by other males or females, sometimes in the phrase ‘(you) big gay bear'.

beard
n

a male escort posing as a boyfriend, lover, husband, etc. The term (heard from the mid-1970s in showbiz and ‘society' circles) may refer to a lesbian's ‘official' partner, with whom she is seen in public.

beast
¹
n

1.
American
a girl or woman. The term, typically used by male college and high-school students, may be either pejorative or appreciative.

2. the beast
heroin. A drug-users' ironic nickname.

3.
a sex offender, in prison slang. A more recent synonym for
nonce
.

‘20 prison officers in riot uniform were observed banging their shields in unison and chanting “Beast, beast, beast!”.'
(
Observer
, 8 April 1990)

4.
also
beast man
an ugly or unattractive male. The term is used by females.

beast
²
vb

1.
British
to bully, oppress, humiliate. The word is part of the jargon of prisoners and prison officers.

2.
also
beast it
to move or act quickly and/or forcefully. The term is used in this sense in the school playground and armed forces
.

beast
³
adj

1.
British
‘really
cool
', in the words of one user

That party was beast
.

2.
American
formidable, difficult, overwhelming. The term was in use on campus in 2011.

Man, that math test was so beast
.

beast(-man)
n British

a police officer or prison officer and, by extension, any figure of authority. The word was adopted by teenage schoolchildren in the 1990s.

beastie
n
,
adj American

a.
(someone) disgusting, coarse or disreputable

b.
(something or someone) impressive, powerful or enormous. This expression, used typically by female teenagers, was a vogue term among blacks and whites in the USA in the 1980s and was adopted ironically in the name of the white
rap
group the Beastie Boys.

beasting
n British

a ‘dressing-down', humiliation or instance of physical bullying. The noun, like the verb to
beast
, is formed from the use of
beast(-man)
in British prison slang to signify an authority figure.

beastly
adj American

strong, assiduous, dedicated, successful

She studies for six hours every day. She's beastly.

beat
¹
n

a member of the ‘beat generation' or aspirer to its values. The term, coined by the influential American writer Jack Kerouac and first published by John Clellon Holmes in his novel
Go
, is derived both from the notion of being beaten, downtrodden or poor, and from the notion of beatitude or holiness. The phrase ‘the beat generation', coined in imitation of other literary groups such as the Lost Generation of the 1920s, originally applied to a relatively small group of writers, artists and bohemians in America immediately after World War II, whose activities and beliefs were minutely chronicled in autobiographical, mystical and experimental prose and poetry by Kerouac, Holmes, Gregory Corso, William Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, among others. The term
beatniks
(employing the Slavonic ‘-nik' suffix disparagingly) was applied to these and later followers by members of
straight
society, hostile to what they saw as the licentious, irreligious and communistic aspects of the beat lifestyle. In Britain the beats were a youth subculture of the early-to mid-1960s, which co-existed with the
mods
and
rockers
and metamorphosed into the
hippies
.

‘The most beautifully executed, the clearest and most important utterance yet made by the generation Kerouac himself named years ago as “beat”, and whose principal avatar he is.'
(Gilbert Millstein,
New York Times
, 5 September 1957)

beat
²
adj American

excellent, admirable, fashionable. A synonym for
cool
, in vogue since 2000 and used by pop singer Britney Spears among others.

beat
³
vb British

to have sex with someone. The verb, reported by South London schoolchildren in 2010, is usually used transitively in the past tense.

Josh beat Ella.

beat it up!
exclamation American

an exhortation to speak clearly. The expression has been in use since 2000.

Come on man, beat it up! We don't have all day.

beatnik
n

someone following a
beat
lifestyle or modes of dress. The term was coined by newspapermen to deride the self-styled members of the beat generation but was later adopted by beatniks themselves; the ‘-nik' suffix came from Slavonic and was meant to identify the beats with godless Communism (as well as being a derogatory word-ending in Yiddish terms such as
nudnik
). Aspects of the beatnik lifestyle included scruffy dress (often black), berets, modern jazz, coffee bars, a slightly more liberal attitude to sex than their contemporaries, at least a pretence at interest in modern arts and literature and a youth cult. Beatniks had passed their peak by 1960, but many of them (who incidentally referred to themselves simply as
beats
) were absorbed into the
hippy
movement in the mid-1960s.

‘A petition signed by 2,321 residents and holidaymakers at St Ives, Cornwall was handed to the Mayor, Ald. Archie Knight during the weekend. It calls for tighter vagrancy laws to rid the town of beatniks.'
(
Daily Telegraph
, 21 July 1969)

beat off, beat one's meat
vb

(of a male) to masturbate. The first expression is primarily American, the second international English.

beat one's boats
vb American

to depart, run away. A jocular term heard since the 1990s and based on ‘boats' as a slang synonym for shoes or the feet.

beats, the
n

a physical attack

Let's give him (the) beats
.

beat-up
adj American

unfair. The term, used by younger speakers since 2000, is a transfer from the older sense of beat(en)-up as damaged or decrepit.

beaucoup
adj See
bokoo
¹

beaut
adj Australian

excellent. The abbreviation of beautiful has been in use for many years in Australia, and in 2010 was recorded as a significant item of regional slang in Wales, too.

beaver
n

1a.
American
the female genitals. A term referring to the pubic hair and vagina (‘a beaver').

1b.
American
a woman or women seen exclusively as sex objects

Let's get some beaver!

These terms became known, though until recently rarely used, outside the USA via pin-up magazines in the late 1960s.

2.
a beard, especially a full or luxuriant one. A light-hearted 19th-century usage, still heard among older adults.

He's sporting a handsome beaver.

Bedfordshire
n British

a bed or bedtime. A nursery joke-form of the standard words, from the parents' catchphrase ‘up the wooden hill to Bedfordshire', meaning ‘(go) up the stairs to bed'. This usage is in fact 200-year-old peasant humour.

beef
¹
n