Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (34 page)

catch a cold
vb

to suffer a financial loss or setback. This expression, from business jargon, implies a temporary rather than terminal affliction.

catch some z's
vb American

a version of
cop some zees

cathouse
n

a brothel. A widely known expression, although it is mainly used in the USA, cathouse is based upon cat in its now archaic sense of a prostitute (current in British English from the 16th to the early 20th century).

cavalier
n British

(a male with) an uncircumcised penis. This term is from the argot of schoolchildren.

Compare
roundhead

caz
adj See
cas

CBA
exclamation British

a shrug of indifference

ceebs
adj British

an abbreviated version of
CBA
used by teenagers in 2010

cementhead
n American

a stupid person. A coinage on the lines of
rubblehead
,
rock-head
, etc. (The notion of ‘rocks in one's head' in place of brains is a well-known American concept.)

century
n

£100 or $100. The word has been common in the argot of criminals, among others, for the last hundred years.

I put a century on it and it lost.

cereb
n American

a
swot
in the language of the more sophisticated
preppies
. The word is from cerebral and may be pronounced ‘see-reb' or ‘sareb'.

cessy
adj British

foul, repugnant, disgusting. A fairly rare, and usually middle-class usage, derived from cesspool or cesspit.

Honestly, the whole thing was cessy!

cha!
exclamation American

a strong affirmation or agreement, yes! The term is probably a shortening of the colloquial ‘(you) betcha!'

chach
n American

a pretentious, e.g. overdressed individual, showoff. Defined by students as ‘someone who is so concerned about social image that he or she overdoes it'.

cha-cha
n British

a friend, peer. The term is used by British Asians.

chachy, chach
adj American

overdressed, pretentious in appearance, in poor taste

Wearing a bowtie to class is pretty chachy.

chad
n

rubbish, debris, worthless information. The term derives from computing jargon in which it denotes the waste paper discarded from a printer.

chai
n British

a girl, female. An item of
parlyaree
first recorded in the 19th century and still used by older members of the
gay
community in London in the 1980s. An alternative spelling is
chy
. The term derives from Romany.

chai-klom, chy-clom
n British

a female wig or hairstyle. An item of
parlyaree
recorded since the 1960s. The second part of the compound is of uncertain origin. The first is the parlyaree (originally Romany) term for a girl.

chair, the
n American

the electric chair. Used for the execution of criminals in many parts of the world.

Chalfonts
n pl British

‘haemorrhoids'. Rhyming slang for piles, from the small town of Chalfont St Giles in Buckinghamshire.
Farmers
and
nauticals
are synonyms.

‘Stan was around yesterday, complaining about his Chalfonts.'
(Recorded, pensioner, Bristol, 1989)

chandies
n South African

a difficult situation, trouble. Recorded as an item of Sowetan slang in the
Cape Sunday Times
, 29 January 1995.

chang, charlie chang
n

cocaine. A term used by young street-gang members in London since around 2000. The coinage may be an invention or a deformation or mis-hearing of the name – Charlie Chan – of a fictional 1940s detective.

chap
vb American

to irritate or provoke. A term heard in adolescent usage since the 1980s, deriving from the sense of the standard term signifying ‘to chafe'.

Quit chappin' me!

chap-esse
n British

a woman. The word became popular in ironic and facetious middle-class speech and in the slang of the armed services in the early 1990s.

Now here's something special for all you chaps and chap-esses out there…

chappin'
adj British

cold, freezing. In use among South London schoolchildren in 2010.
Cuttin'
is a synonym.

char, cha
n British

tea. The words for tea in almost all Eastern languages, from Slavonic through Indian to Chinese, are variants of ‘ch'a' or ‘chai'.

a nice cup of char

charfing
n South African

joking, teasing. Recorded as an item of Sowetan slang in the
Cape Sunday Times
, 29 January 1995.

charge
n British

hashish or marihuana. The word was popular in the 1950s and 1960s, especially among
beatniks
, students, etc., who generally did not use hard drugs.

Got any charge, man?

Charles
n British

cocaine.

See also
charlie
¹
2

charlie
¹
n

1.
British
a foolish person. This innocuous word, often encountered in the expression
‘a right/proper charlie', is in fact derived from the more vulgar cockney rhyming slang Charlie Hunt:

cunt
. In pre-World War II cockney usage cunt merely meant a fool, rather than the modern sense of a thoroughly unpleasant person.

2.
cocaine. A euphemism from the international alphabet designation for the letter ‘C', or simply a nickname. (The full form of the proper name, Charles, is occasionally used, usually facetiously, in Britain in this sense of the word.)

‘She came steaming into the room when I had a massive great pile of charlie drying out on the floor.'
(
News of the World
, 29 October 1989)

3.
American
the Viet Cong personified. During the Vietnam War the military alphabet designation ‘Victor Charlie' was shortened thus.

4.
South African
a friend. Recorded as an item of Sowetan slang in the
Cape Sunday Times
, 29 January 1995.

5.
British
the penis

charlie
²
adj British

cheap and nasty, flashy or in bad taste. A public-school and
Sloane Ranger
term of disapproval, heard in the early 1980s.

He's really awfully charlie.
The flat's a bit charlie, if you ask me.

charlies
n pl

female breasts. A word used (almost exclusively by men) since the 19th century. There have been many attempts to explain this term by deriving it from rhyming slang (Charlie Wheeler:
Sheila
), from Romany or from the habits of Charles II. It is more probably simply a personification which implies affectionate familiarity.

charver, charva
vb
,
n British

(to have) sexual intercourse. A word that was almost unknown by the 1980s, but which was used in criminal, theatrical and other circles in the 1950s and early 1960s. It is Romany in origin (from
charvo
meaning to interfere with), and refers to the ‘taking' of a woman by a man, so, by extension, it has been used to portray a woman as a sex object.

chase the dragon
vb

a.
to take heroin by smoking it. The specific meaning of this expression (the arrival of which coincided with an influx of cheap heroin into the UK in the late 1970s) is to inhale fumes from a piece of the vaporising drug through a tube, often literally chasing the smoke across the sheet of foil on which the drug is ‘cooked'.

‘Carmella never injected heroin, her serious involvement came with “chasing the dragon”, inhaling a burning trail from a piece of tin foil.'
(
Independent
, 17 July 1989)

b.
to flirt with death by using heroin. This more generalised meaning of the sinisterly colourful phrase was adopted by middle-and upper-class drug users when heroin spread to these circles in the early 1980s.

(le) chat
n British

seductive talk or flattery. From ‘chatting up', often pronounced jocularly as the French word for ‘cat'. An item of student slang in use in London and elsewhere since around 2000.

chat
vb

a.
to speak, talk

‘…u chat out ur ass.'
(Recorded, contributor to
www.wassup.com
, November 2003)

b.
to say

‘Jus because we use slang doesn't make us dumbasses…so stop chattin fluff!'
(Recorded, contributor to
www.wassup.com
, November 2003)

c.
to contribute to an online chat room

d.
British
to talk back, contradict

Don' you chat to me!

chateau'd
adj British

drunk. A colourful upper-class and
yuppie
expression of the late 1980s playing on ‘shattered' and implying that it is an expensive claret (Bordeaux) or other château-bottled wine which has caused the inebriety.

Chatham pocket
n British

the anus. The nickname, used by police and prison offers among others, refers to miscreants smuggling illicit items by concealing them in the cavity in question. The town of Chatham in Kent has been popularly associated with
chavs
and their anti-social or criminal activities.

chav, charv, charva
n British

a vulgar person, representative of the working class or underclass. A vogue term and concept from 2004, defined by the
Sunday Telegraph
as ‘…the non-respectable working classes: the dole-scroungers, petty criminals, football hooligans and teenage pram-pushers'. The word originates as Romany for ‘friend'. The chav's appearance typically incorporates (for both sexes) white trainers, a tracksuit, heavy jewellery (known as
Argos bling
after
the catalogue chain store), baseball caps and often the scraped-back hairstyle dubbed a ‘Croydon facelift' (Croydon being a London suburb considered emblematic of brash unsophistication).

‘The cultural phenomenon that is “chav” was kicked off by
www.chavscum.co.uk
, a site billing itself as a humorous guide to Britain's burgeoning peasant under-class.'
(
Guardian
, 10 March 2004)

chavvie
n British

a friend, ‘mate'. The word probably comes from Romany.

Compare
chav

cheaters
n pl American

sunglasses or glasses. A word now popular with schoolchildren but which probably originated with cardsharps, who supposedly used ‘magic spectacles', or with fraudsters who wore dark glasses as a disguise.

chebs
n pl British

female breasts. One of a set of synonyms popular among younger males since 2000.
Wabs, waps, baps
and
smams
are others.

check
vb British

to visit, especially one's girl/boyfriend. In this sense the term, popular since 2000, has been defined as ‘seeing someone, not officially going out'.

Seb's checkin' Rachel, so I hear.

check!
exclamation American

yes. A jargon expression of affirmation (based on the mark of verification on a checklist, for instance) carried over into popular speech.

‘Hey you, stay cool!
Check!'
(
Panic on the 5.22
, US film, 1974)