Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (161 page)

tucked up
adj British

1.
imprisoned, incarcerated. A homely euphemism for a grim reality in the tradition of London working-class usages.

‘Adjusting back to normal society is not easy when you've been tucked up for a bit.'
(Recorded, ex-prisoner, London, 1986)

2.
cheated, duped. A London working-class usage paralleling the more widespread
stitch (someone) up
.

tuckered (out)
adj

exhausted. This is originally an American term deriving from an archaic sense of the verb ‘tuck', signifying rebuke or reproach. (In Old English
tuck
also had the sense of to ill-treat.) Now, as heard in such phrases as ‘plumb tuckered out', the word has folksy overtones.

tuck-tuck
n British

a ‘break' at school, from the old schoolboy use of
tuck
to mean food

tuck (someone) up
vb British

a.
to defeat, capture

b.
to confound, dupe

This allpurpose phrase is in London working-class usage, particularly amongst criminals and the police. The image is that of putting a helpless child to bed.

tud, tut
n British

rubbish. The word was used by clubbers and some teenagers in 2000. It may be a dialect term in origin but its etymology is unclear.

a load of old tud
It's no tud.

tude
n American

(a bad)
attitude
; a surly, defiant or negative disposition. A short form of the type (i.e.
the burbs, nabe, perp, tard
) fashionable in adolescent circles in the late 1970s and 1980s and, more recently, in (often facetious) journalese usage.

tug
n British

1.
an arrest or detention of a suspect (in the jargon of the underworld or police officers), a
collar

'E won't be expecting a tug at that time of night.

2.
an act of manual sexual stimulation of a male, usually by a female. A less common synonym of
hand-job
in use particularly in Australian speech in the 1990s.

tukus
n American See
tush

tumble
n

1.
an act of sexual intercourse. This fairly inoffensive expression is often elaborated to ‘tumble in the hay'.

2.
British
an attempt, try. In working-class usage ‘give it a tumble' is the equivalent of ‘give it a whirl' (the Australian expression is ‘give it a
burl
').

3.
arrest, capture or detention. In criminal and police parlance in both Britain and the USA the word is used in these senses by analogy with a fall suffered by a racehorse or sports contender.

4.
See
take a dive/tumble/fall

tummy banana
n

the penis. A nursery expression adopted, or perhaps invented for jocular use, by adults. The phrase was first heard in middle-class circles in the early 1970s.

tump
vb British

to hit, beat up. Used in street-gang code and its imitations since around 2010, it is a ‘black' pronunciation of the colloquial ‘thump'. A contemporary synonym is
bong
.

tuna
n American

1a.
a girl or woman. Users of the term, who include teenagers and
preppies
, are often unaware of its origins in the senses which follow.

1b.
sexual activity

1c.
the female sex organs

The use of the seafood metaphor (popular in the USA long before it was readily available in Britain) as a euphemism for femininity or femaleness is inspired by the piscine quality of the female sexual odour.

2.
marihuana. The reason for this usage is unclear; it may simply be a transference of the idea of tuna as a delicacy or staple food.

tuneage
n American

music. A mock-pompous coinage using the
-age
suffix and recorded among college students in the mid-1990s.

tune in
vb

to attune to one's environment, achieve harmony with one's peer group, the counterculture and/or the cosmos. This
hipster
and
beatnik
term became part of the catchphrase slogan of the
hippy
movement; ‘turn on, tune in, drop out'. Unlike the other two verbs, tune in was not itself adopted into mainstream colloquial speech.

tuntun
n American

the vagina. The word is used by
hip hop
aficionados and students. Its origins are obscure, but it may be a form of
tuna 1
.

Toont
is a variant form.

tup
vb British

to have sex (with). The country persons' term for the copulation of a ram with a ewe (from the Middle English word for ram,
tupe
) is, by extension, used vulgarly of humans.

turbo-crush
n British

an infatuation. ‘Turbo-' here is used as an intensifier in the same way as the contemporary and more common ‘mega-'. ‘To have a turbo-crush on someone' was a vogue expression among younger British adolescents in the mid-1990s.

turd
n

1.
a piece of excrement. A descendant of the Anglo-Saxon word
tord
, the term was freely used until about the 17th century, by which time it was being avoided in polite speech and writing. It is still considered vulgar by many speakers, although, when referring, e.g., to dog droppings, it is now sometimes used even in broadcasts.

2.
an unpleasant and/or despicable person. In this sense the word has the same connotation of obnoxiousness as its literal and figurative synonym,
shit
.

turd burglar
n British

a male homosexual. One of several jocular but hostile phrases of the 1980s (such as
fudgepacker
and
brownie-hound
), used by heterosexuals to suggest the faecal aspects of sodomy.

turf
¹
n

a street gang or street drug dealer's territory

‘In fact he's a lookout, a lookout for cops and strangers, for other dealers stealing “turf”.'
(
Guardian
, 5 September 1989)

turf
²
vb British

to throw away, rid oneself of (something or someone). A slang form of the colloquial ‘turf out', used by, e.g., medical personnel.

If you don't want it, just turf it.
He thought he was going to be there for ever but he got turfed after a couple of days.

turfed
adj British

expelled, moved on (e.g. by the police), thrown out. The term was in use among gang members and their imitators in 2008.

turistas, the turistas, touristas
n American

an attack of diarrhoea.
Turista
is Spanish (or Mexican) for tourist.

turkey-neck
n American

the penis. From the supposed resemblance.

‘When your mother's crying at the funeral, I'm gonna goose her with my turkey-neck.'
(
Barfly
, US film, 1987)

turn a trick
vb

to service a (prostitute's) client. The phrase, evoking a neat execution of a deception, stratagem or performance, has been in use since the early years of the 20th century.

See also
trick
¹
1a

turned-on
adj

1.
aware,
hip
or liberated. A term of approbation of the 1960s, deriving from the notion of being ‘turned-on' by a mood-altering drug.
Switched-on
was a British alternative form.

2a.
sexually aroused. A slang phrase of the 1950s which has become a common colloquialism.

2b.
stimulated, fascinated. A generalisation of the previous sense of the term.

turned out
adj American

sodomised, sexually brutalised, forcibly converted to homosexual practices US prisoners' jargon recorded in the 2002 TV documentary
Dark Secrets
.

turn-off
n

a depressing, deflating, disappointing or unexciting experience. The phrase was coined by analogy with its opposite,
turn-on
.

‘It's really nice that you want to be well
groomed, but you get hair in the food.

Hair in the food is a turn-off, Joan, sweetie.'
(
The Serial
, Cyra McFadden, 1976)
‘I find all that sort of thing [male bodybuilding] a complete turn-off.'
(Recorded, female social worker, London, 1987)

turn on
vb

a.
to take a drug. The term first referred to hard narcotics, but was later applied to cannabis and LSD. It was originally based on the notion of stimulus at the throw of a switch.

b.
to allow oneself to experience a heightened or more liberated reality. One of the three ‘commandments' of the alternative society of the late 1960s; ‘turn on, tune in, drop out'.

‘Within a year the league [for Spiritual Discovery] will have a million members who will turn on with LSD every seven days.'
(Timothy Leary,
Sunday Times
colour supplement, 1 January 1967)

turn-on
n

a.
a drug, specifically a user's drug of choice

What's your turn-on?

b.
anything arousing or exciting, a sexual stimulus. A back-formation from
turned-on
.

I love shoes – patent leather stilettos are a real turn-on.

turn (someone) over
vb British

a.
to cheat, rob

I never thought my best mate would turn me over.

b.
to attack, beat up

c.
to raid and/or search premises All three subsenses are in working-class use, particularly in London. The first two have been heard since the 1950s, the third from the mid-19th century.

turn up
vb American
to indulge in wild, excessive behaviour. A euphemism popular in 2013 among teenagers and young adults.

We totally turned up at that party.

turtle
n

a.
a passive sexual partner, especially one willing to offer oral or anal sex. The term is in use among prisoners, criminals, etc., and is often applied to male prisoners who offer sexual favours in return for tobacco, etc.

b.
a woman regarded as a sex object
‘Lesley Morris, 23, said sailors called the WRENS sluts, slags, splits and turtles.'
(
Daily Mirror
, 4 February 1997)

turtles
n pl

gloves
. An item of rhyming slang (from ‘turtle doves'). This example of the jargon of cat burglars was recorded in
FHM
magazine in April 1996.

tush, tushie
n American

the buttocks, backside. These are inoffensive terms used in the family and elsewhere. They derive from the Yiddish
tochis
, also written
tokus
,
tukus
or
tuchis
, which in turn derives from the Hebrew
tokheth
.

tut
n British

1.
a version of
tud

2.
a tutorial. A spoken student abbreviation reported by the
Guardian
newspaper in 2012.

T.V.
n

transvestism or a transvestite

twang
vb British

(of a female) to masturbate. The term was used by UK students in 2000.

twang (the wire)
vb

to masturbate. This word, used only of men, was originally an Australianism with rural overtones.

twanger
n American

the penis

twannie
n British

a stupid, obnoxious person. The term is a combination of
twat
and
pranny
.

twat
¹
, twot
n British

1.
the vagina. A word first recorded in the 17th century. The etymology is obscure but it probably derives from a rural dialect term.

2.
a foolish or obnoxious person. The word has had this sense (firstly in London slang) since the late 19th century. Until the early to mid-1960s the word was in widespread use in this context, often amongst school-children and some adults who were unaware of its provenance (and probably thought it an intensive form of twit).

‘What kind of creature bore you/was it some kind of bat?/they can't find a good word for you/but I can/twat.'
(
A love story in reverse
, poem by John Cooper Clarke, 1978)

twat
²
vb British

to hit, beat up