Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (145 page)

snufty
n British

an individual who derives sexual excitement from sniffing (clothing, bicycle saddles, etc.)

snyster
n British

a snack. A dialect term from Lowland Scotland occasionally heard in other parts of the country.

soap-dodger
n British

a dirty, unkempt or smelly person, a ‘scruffbag' or
dosser
. An expression of disapproval among adults.
Bath-dodger
is a synonym.

soap (someone) up
vb American

to flatter, cajole. A phrase used especially by adolescents since 2000. It may derive from the earlier phrase ‘to soft-soap someone'.

S.O.B., s.o.b.
n American

son of a bitch
. The initial letters are often used in order to moderate the strength of the phrase, which is highly offensive in American usage.

Some S.O.B. walked off with her purse.

social handbag
n British

an escort for a social occasion,
arm candy
. An item of student slang in use in London and elsewhere since around 2000.

sock (someone)
vb British

to have sex with. An item of black street-talk used especially by males, recorded in 2003, often in the form of the taboo insult or provocation ‘sock yer mom!'.

sock-puppet
n

a fictional online identity, typically created for nefarious purposes. Real sock-puppets are simple homemade toys typically improvised by American parents to amuse small children.

They ramped the sale by having sock-puppets popping up everywhere liking them.

sod
¹
n British

1a.
an unpleasant person (of either sex, but more often male). The word often implies unfair or cruel behaviour on the part of the person described.

I'm sorry I was such a sod to you.

1b.
an individual. Like
bugger
, the term is used when referring to someone with pity, irony or mild contempt.

‘And that was another coincidence because he was the bloke I'd met earlier in the boozer, so I gave him my last £20 note because I thought, poor sod, he'll soon be dead.'
(William Donaldson,
Independent
, 26 August 1989)

1c.
a nuisance or annoyance

That lid's a real sod to get off.

2.
a sodomite. The original sense of the word is almost never heard in current English, it was last used in this way in the early 1960s. (The inhabitants of Sodom were, according to the book of Genesis, guilty of unnatural sexual practices.)

sod
²
vb British

the verb usually occurs as part of expletives such as ‘sod you!' (indicating indifference, rejection, etc.) or ‘sod it!' (indicating irritation or anger). Unlike its synonym
bugger
, the word is not used to mean sodomise.

sod-all
n British

nothing,
bugger-all

He got the profit and I got sod-all.

sodcasting
n British

broadcasting irritating music, opinions, etc. by way of a mobile phone, computer or other electronic means. The jocular term is a blend of
sod
and podcasting.

‘…the prevalence of sodcasting (playing loud music through a phone's less than sweet-sounding speaker) on the train.'
(Henry Hitchings, London
Evening Standard
, 11 January 2013)

sodding
adj British

an intensifying adjective like
bloody
,
bleeding
, etc. Sodding usually carries overtones of extreme irritation, impatience, etc.

sod off
vb British

to leave, go away. The phrase is almost always an imperative, sometimes conveying only mild annoyance or aggression.

I told them to sod off and leave me alone.

sofa spud
n American

a lazy, inert person. The term is a jocular variant of
couch potato
.

soft boy
n Jamaican

a male homosexual or an effete or effeminate man. This phrase from Jamaican patois was adopted ironically as a name by the Soft Boys, a London rock group of the 1970s.

softshoe
vb

to move or behave surreptitiously or in a manner both cautious and devious. Like
tap-dance
the metaphor is applied in raffish or
hip
talk to someone manoeuvring cleverly in social or professional situations. The expression is of course from the ‘soft-shoe shuffle' dance step.

The guy managed to softshoe his way out of trouble again.

soggies
n British

breakfast cereal. A middle- and upper-class term of the late 1970s and early 1980s inspired by the trademark names of cereals such as
Shreddies
and
Frosties
and their eventual consistency.

soggy
adj British

stupid, idiotic. A widespread item of teenage slang.

‘It has previously been used to mean everything from letting yourself go physically (“Steve's well buff, unlike Danny who's proper soggy”) to sexually (“Sharon even slept with Danny, she's so soggy”), via a general displeasure with how everything's turned out (“How's things, man?” “Pretty soggy”).'
(“Yoofspeak”,
Times Educational Supplement
, 15 May 2010)

soixante-neuf
n See
sixty-nine

soldier
n See
dead soldier

solid
¹
n British

hashish (as opposed to loose-leaf marihuana)

solid
²
adj

excellent, exciting. The slang term, still used by younger speakers in 2004, originated as part of pre-World War II
jive talk
, based on the colloquial sense of solid as denoting dependable, satisfactory.

something else
n

something or someone outstanding, excellent, exceptional. An enduring phrase from the
hip
lexicon of the 1950s.

‘She goes with all the guys from out of my class
But that can't stop me from thinking to myself,
“She's sure fine looking, man, she's something else”.'
(
Something Else
, written by Sharon Sheeley and Eddie Cochran, recorded by Eddie Cochran, 1959)

son of a bitch, sonofabitch
n American

an unpleasant, obnoxious or despicable person. The expression is roughly the equivalent of the British
bastard
or
sod
, and often implies active nastiness, although it may be used with pity (‘poor son of a bitch') or annoyance (‘that engine's a son of a bitch!'). The epithet fell out of use in British speech around the middle of the 19th century. (The British Reverend Benjamin Newton records in his diary for 1818 how a wealthy fellow clergyman who had two sons called the one born out of wedlock ‘son of a whore' and the one born within ‘son of a bitch'.) In American speech the phrase son of a bitch was until recently considered too offensive for ‘polite company' or broadcasting and would often be reduced to
S.O.B.

‘Wherever he went, Andy would have to be the nice guy and I had to be the sonofabitch.'
(Fred Hughes on Andy Warhol,
Observer
magazine, March 1988)

sook, sooky
n Australian

a ‘cry-baby'. The noun probably postdates the adjective
sooky
, but the origins of both forms are uncertain.

sooky
adj Australian

a.
sulky, sullen

b.
sentimental, ‘soft' or ‘unmanly'

The word may be a corruption or nursery version of ‘sulky' itself, but the etymology is obscure. It has been suggested that it may derive from an archaic diminutive of ‘Susan'.

sooty
n British

a black or coloured person, an Arab. The racist epithet is derived from the colour of soot and the name of a glove puppet of a yellow bear, a popular figure in children's entertainment, especially television, since the 1950s. Although sooty does not sound
unaffectionate, in actuality it is often used highly offensively. (In 1745 Henry Fielding referred to Jews as ‘the Sooty Tribe' in his
Covent Garden Tragedy
.)

‘We're pretty liberal really, we've only got one rule: no sooties.'
(Recorded, proprietor of Sloane Rangers' nightclub, 1986)

soppo
adj British

fashionable, exciting. This term of unknown origin, recorded among London's schoolchildren in the early 1990s, was defined by one user as ‘
funky
or
groovy
'. It is unlikely to be related to the negative ‘soppy', but might be an alteration of ‘sophisticated'.

sort
n

a girl or woman. This specific sense of the word as used in working-class British and Australian speech may derive from the archaic ‘salt'.

sort (out)
vb British

1.
to beat up. An innocuous euphemism describing a brutal reality, in keeping with a tendency of London working-class slang toward menacing understatement.

‘I'll go and sort this Daley geezer.'
(
Minder
, British TV series, 1987)

See also
bother
;
seeing-to

2.
to have sex with. A masculine vulgarism with overtones of depersonalisation and brusqueness.

sorted
adj British

a.
in a satisfactory situation, comfortable and content

I reckon if you've got a girl, a car and a few bob, you're sorted.
‘Sorted for E's and Whizz.'
(Title of song by Pulp, 1995)

b.
excellent

‘Let's finish up and get going.'
‘Sorted.'

This use of the word (a clipping of the phrase ‘sorted out'), which originated in criminal circles, meaning ‘safely arranged' or ‘adequately supplied', became one of the most popular vogue terms of the 1990s, beginning as a catchphrase among drug-dealers and eventually finding its way into the colloquial speech of middle-class adults.

sound
adj British

excellent. A vogue term of approbation, generalised from the standard sense of ‘reliable' for use among adolescents from the early 1990s. The word was particularly popular in the speech of the Merseyside area and often used as an exclamation.

soused
adj

drunk, from the standard use of the word to mean soaked or drenched

‘The Case of The Soused Superintendent'
(Headline of online article at
www.ethics scoreboard.com
, 2 May 2004)

sov
n British

one pound. The word is a shortening of ‘sovereign' and was used to designate that gold coin (worth one pound) until its discontinuance in 1914. Sov was popularised by its copious use in the popular TV series
Minder
, set among the working-class and criminal population of London.

‘“Eric Idle sounds as though he might just have relieved a punter of 500 sovs for a second-hand motor”.'
(
Independent
, 17 March 1989)

sow
n British

an unpleasant woman. The (fairly rare) term of abuse usually implies real distaste or bitter recrimination.

SOZ, soz
exclamation

the shortest possible apology

S.P.
n British

starting price, the odds on a horse. Hence essential information, a basis for judgment, the known form. A term fashionable in working-class and raffish circles since the later 1980s. It has been in underworld and gambling use since the 1950s.

‘What's the S.P. on Murphy? Dead from the neck up!'
(“Arthur Daley” in
Minder
, British TV series, 1984)

spa
n British

a good friend. The term has been in use among London teenagers since the 1990s and before that was heard in Wales. It may derive from ‘sparring-partner'.
Star-spa
is a variant form.