Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (30 page)

a swindle, fraud. A version of ‘bunk' or ‘bunkum' which has not been exported.

bundle
n

1.
a large quantity of money or of something else desirable, such as narcotics

I lost a bundle.

2.
British
a fight, brawl or rough-and-tumble. Used especially by schoolchildren from the 1950s onwards, typically as a cry or chant to attract onlookers to a playground or street fight, it is the British equivalent of the American
rumble
. Bundle is also used as a verb.

3.
the male genitals, normally as seen through tight clothing. A term used by homosexuals and heterosexuals since the mid-1960s.

4.
American
an attractive woman. A condescending term which is probably a shortening of ‘bundle of joy'.

See also
drop a bundle

bundle of sticks
n American

a male homosexual, a humorous definition of
faggot
. An expression used on campus in the USA since around 2000.

bung
n British

a bribe. A term used by police officers and criminals, almost always to refer to a bribe being given to a policeman. This normally implies something more substantial than a
drink
. The earlier verb form to
bung (someone)
, meaning to bribe or pay
protection money to, is now rare but not yet obsolete.

He wants a bung of a monkey to square it.

bung (someone)
vb British

to bribe, pay protection money to. An item of underworld and police jargon.

We're going to have to bung him if we want to stay out of trouble.

bungalowed
adj British

drunk. The term, a jocular formation by analogy with earlier three-syllable synonyms, was in use among teenagers and students in the 2000s.

bunghole
¹
n

the anus. A vulgarism found in the works of the celebrator of low life, Charles Bukowski, among others.

bunghole
²
vb

to sodomise,
bugger

bung it on
vb Australian

to behave in a presumptuous or pretentious manner. The term denotes ‘putting on airs', from which phrase it may derive.

bungled
adj

ugly. One of a set of terms including
cruttess, off-key
and
cake-up
which have been in vogue among street-gang members,
hip hop
aficionados and students in the UK since 2000.

bung on a blue
vb Australian

to lose one's temper, indulge in a display of irritation

bun in the oven
n British

‘to have a bun in the oven' has meant to be pregnant in working-class British usage since the 19th century. The comparison of the stomach or abdomen with an oven is older still.

bunjie
n British

an alternative form of

bungy bunk
¹
adj American

unfashionable,
uncool
. A teenage vogue word from 1987 which is a deliberate shifting of the standard sense of bunk and bunkum (as signifying nonsense). It was still in use in 2005.

a real bunk thing to do
That's bunk, man.

See also
bank
²
1

bunk
²
vb American

to cheat. A verb formed from the colloquial nouns bunk and bunkum and the slang term
bunco
.

bunk in
vb British

to gatecrash, enter illicitly or surreptitiously. Bunk in occurs in many contexts as a version of bung, meaning to throw forcibly; here the image evoked is of being lifted or hoisted, e.g. through a window.

‘I told him I'd never been to drama school, so he said: “RADA the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts is just down the road. Let's go and bunk in”.'
(Philip Roth,
Observer
, Section 5, 9 April 1989)

bunk off
vb British

to play truant or absent oneself. A term now heard mainly among schoolchildren, bunk off is a variant of ‘do a bunk' which has been a common expression since the 19th century. There is no connection with bunk bed, but rather with the sense of bunk (like ‘bung') meaning ‘to hoist or toss'.

bunk-up
n British

1.
an act of sexual intercourse, especially when furtive and/or brusque. A term influenced more by the notion of being ‘up someone' than the erotic possibilities of bunk beds.

a bunk-up behind the bike sheds

2.
a lift, help in climbing something

Give me a bunk-up over this wall and I'll scrump us some apples.

Both uses were common schoolchildren's currency in the 1950s and 1960s. The sense of bunk evoked is hoist or throw; it is a variant form of ‘bung'.

bunnies
n pl

female breasts

The jocular nickname/euphemism, popular since 2000, is used by males.

bunnin'
n

smoking (cannabis or, less commonly, tobacco). A term from Caribbean speech, also heard in the UK since 2000, especially among younger speakers.

bunny
n

1.
British
incessant talking, chatter. This is a later version of
rabbit
(a shortening of the rhyming slang ‘rabbit and pork':
talk
). As rabbit entered non-cockney colloquial speech, so working-class Londoners adopted this more raffish alternative. It is sometimes used in the verb form.

2a.
Australian
a dupe or victim. Eric Partridge dates this usage to the 1920s, although the word was briefly used in a similar sense by British
teddy boys
in the 1950s and by the US novelist Sinclair Lewis.

2b.
a girl or young woman. A patronising male term with similar implications to the previous sense.

bunny-boiler
n

a vengeful, dangerous female. The reference is to the 1987 film
Fatal Attraction
in which a jilted woman kills (by boiling) the pet rabbit belonging to her ex-lover's family. The term has become very widespread.

‘Coronation Street bunny-boiler Maya Sharma tries to wreck love rival Sunita Pareklis' wedding plans…'
(
Daily Mirror
, 16 July 2004)

buns
n pl

1.
American
the buttocks. A popular term since the early 1970s which is not particularly vulgar and which is gaining currency outside North America. The origin may be an obsolete northern British dialect term for ‘tail', a variation on
bum
, or may simply refer to the parallels in form and texture with edible buns.

2.
Australian
sanitary towels or tampons. A shortening of ‘jam buns' used almost exclusively by men. (‘To have the buns on' is to be menstruating.)

bupkes, bupkiss
n American

a.
an insignificant amount or trivial matter

b.
nothing or none

The words are a borrowing from Yiddish, which adopted them from the Russian for ‘beans', a term widely used colloquially (in expressions such as ‘not worth a hill/row of beans') to suggest items of little value.

bupz, boopz, bupps
n Jamaican

a male providing financial support to a female, as sugar daddy, dupe or benefactor

bupz/boopz/bupps (someone) out
vb Jamaican

(of a female) to take advantage of a male benefactor

bupzin(g), boopzin', buppsin'
n Jamaican and British

the term, used in UK youth slang when a boy escorts and/or shows generosity to a girl, is from Caribbean usage where it refers to a man providing financially for a woman, not necessarily in return for romance or sexual favours

burbs, the
n pl American

the suburbs. A vogue word of the later 1980s.

burg
n American

a town, place. From the Germanic component added to many American placenames.

Let's split this burg for good.

burl
n Australian

a try. Usually in the phrase ‘give it a burl', meaning to make an attempt at, to try (a task or activity). Probably a blend of the colloquial expressions ‘have a bash' and ‘give it a whirl'. Give it a burl is one of many Australian expressions given currency in Britain by the cartoon strip
The Adventures of Barry McKenzie
, written by Barry Humphries, which ran in the satirical magazine
Private Eye
between 1965 and 1974. Some of the more colourful of these expressions were in fact coined, or embellished, by Humphries himself, but this phrase was well established in Australia by the early 1960s.

burly
¹
n
,
adj American

(something) difficult, hard to achieve, problematical. A teenage vogue term from 1987, in use among the successors of
Valley Girls
and
preppies
, among others. It may originate in black street slang, where standard terms are often appropriated for use as gang code words, or from surfers' slang.

burly
²
adj

excellent. A reversal along the lines of
bad, wicked, brutal
, etc., heard in youth slang since the late 1990s.

burn
¹
n

1a.
tobacco

Got any burn?

1b.
a cigarette

1c.
a smoke

a quick burn

The first sense is in use in prisons in the UK; the others are also heard in other English-speaking areas.

2.
American
a
hit
of crack

I just need a burn.

3.
a scathing comment

burn
²
vb

to record on CD-Rom or DVD. An item of
hacker
slang that, by 2004, was appearing in advertisements for IT hardware, etc.

burn (someone)
vb

1.
to cheat financially. An Americanism that was part of the
hippy
vocabulary (typically referring to selling phoney drugs) and hence spread to the UK It is now archaic in Britain.

2.
American
to kill someone. A ‘tough guy' euphemism.

burned
adj American

1.
venereally infected

If a chick gave you a disease, then you got burned.

2.
humiliated, derided, insulted

burner
n

1.
a firearm. An item of American teen gang language probably postdating the verb form to
burn (someone)
, reported in the
Sunday Times
, 8 March 1992.

2.
a cell phone typically used and discarded after illicit calls have been made, e.g. in the course of a drug deal. The term occurs in the TV series
The Wire.

burn off
vb British

to overtake, outstrip and thus humiliate another driver. A term from the language of
ton-up boys
and
boy racers
.

BURP
n

a ‘big ugly rough piece'. An unattractive person of the opposite sex. An item of student slang in use in London and elsewhere since around 2000. It is said as a word rather than letter by letter.

bush
¹
adj

provincial or primitive. A term that can mean either rural or second-rate, or both. Much used in Australia in expressions such as ‘bush scrubber' and ‘bush lawyer' and, to a lesser extent, in the USA where it is often in the form
bush-league
, meaning small-town or small-time.

bush
²
n

1.
the pubic hair area. The term is used more often by men of a woman's pubic hair than vice versa.

‘Naff things the French do on a beach: …display enormous pubic bushes.'
(
Complete Naff Guide
, 1983)

2.
marihuana,
grass
. A common term among smokers in the Caribbean and Britain. Bush refers especially to cannabis leaves and seeds sold unsorted and uncleaned.

‘Prisoners cut off the cannabis leaves and dry them before smoking the drug in a form known as “bush”.'
(
Observer
, 12 June 1988)

bushie
n Australian

a provincial, rural or barbaric person; a yokel

‘He thought the stereotype of the sporty, outdoorsy Australian began with the romantic 19th century image created by artists like Banjo Paterson, who had tried to convince us that we were “bushies”.'
(
Southern Cross
magazine, July 1987)

bush-league
adj American

provincial, amateurish, unsophisticated, inferior. The term derives from the categorisation of minor-league baseball teams, and is sometimes shortened to
bush
.