Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (46 page)

deadass
n
,
adj American

(a person who is) very boring, feeble or very stupid

He's a real deadass.
What a deadass town
.

dead bang
adv
,
adj American

caught in flagrante or red-handed. An American police version of
dead to rights
or the British
bang to rights
.

‘I got you dead bang for breaking into Eddie's apartment.'
(
The Rockford Files
, US TV crime series, 1979)

deadbeat
n

a.
a poor or homeless person

b.
a penniless scrounger, a freeloader

c.
a worthless or stupid person All these senses derive from a 19th-century Americanism in which ‘dead' means ‘completely' and ‘beat' is not ‘exhausted' but a ‘loafer' or
hobo
.

dead-crack
adj British

penniless, broke

deadleg
¹
n British

1.
a feeble, lazy or disappointing person. This word has been used from the 1950s and may derive from an earlier armed-forces term ‘deadlegs', meaning a cripple or someone who refuses to rise from bed.

‘The usual crowd of airheads, phonies, deadlegs, posers, bimbos, wallies, wannabees, hangers-on and gate-crashers.'
(Christena Appleyard,
Daily Mirror
, 11 May 1989)

2.
a numb feeling in the leg following a kneeing in the thigh by an attacker

deadleg
²
vb British

the action of kneeing someone in the thigh. A popular school playground tactic.

deadly
adj Irish

excellent,
cool
. The term was recorded with this sense in 2003.

dead meat
n

a person who is dead, about to die or inevitably doomed. Dead meat is an old and heartless euphemism for a corpse. Now the phrase usually forms part of a threat.

Do that, baby, and you're dead meat
!

deadneck
n American

a variant of
deadhead
,
deadbeat
, etc.

deadout
n British

a boring situation, tedious chore or event. The term was in use among South London teenagers in 2010.

dead presidents
n pl American

money, banknotes

deadshit
n
,
adj Australian

(a person who is) contemptible or very unpleasant

That was a deadshit party
.

dead soldier
n

an empty bottle (of alcohol). The phrase was first used by members of the British armed forces about 200 years ago, likening the aftermath of a drinking bout to a battlefield littered with corpses.

I'll clear up the dead soldiers while you fumigate the place
.

dead to rights
adv
,
adj American

an American version of the British
bang to rights
. ‘Dead to rights' is probably the original form of the phrase, dating from the 19th century and now rarely, if ever, heard in Britain.

‘Dead' is used here in its common colloquial meaning of ‘completely'.

deal
¹
n British

a portion or amount of a drug, especially hashish. Before decimalisation in 1971, very small amounts of cannabis were bought or referred to as a ‘five-bob deal' or ‘ten-bob deal'.

deal
²
vb

to sell (drugs). The verb is used intransitively, as in ‘does he still deal?', and transitively, as in ‘she deals dope at the weekend'.

dealer
n

a supplier of illicit drugs. The term, imported into other English-speaking areas from the USA in the early 1960s, is a neutral one, implying someone who sells on demand without coercion. It replaced the earlier, pejorative word
pusher
among users themselves.

dealing
adj British

involved in a relationship, ‘seeing someone'. A fashionable term from the older adolescent's lexicon of dating, heard from the later 1990s. The word had been used in the same sense by public schoolgirls in the 1960s.

deb
n

1.
a debutante; a young girl being introduced into the social season. Although principally identified with an upper-class London milieu, the adoption of
débutante
, French for ‘beginner', may have occurred in the USA in the first decade of the 20th century.

2.
American
a female member of a street gang. A term used in the 1960s, usually in the plural, probably originating in ‘debutante', perhaps reinforced by the prevalence
of the Christian name Deborah or Debbie. ‘Deb' resurfaced in the gang argot of Los Angeles in the 1980s.

de-bag
vb British

to remove (someone's) trousers. The phrase originated among 19th-century university students but quickly spread to schoolboys for whom the ritual humiliation of fellow pupils by de-bagging was a popular diversion up to the late 1960s at least.
Bags
was a 19th-century slang term for trousers which survived until fairly recently.

debted
adj American

rejected, turned down, humiliated

deck
¹
vb

to knock (someone) to the ground. A variant of ‘to floor'.

deck
²
n

1.
a portion or package of illicit drugs, especially heroin. The term, from American addicts' jargon of the 1960s, spread to Britain and Australia where the meaning was sometimes amended to refer to an injection, or the amount (of heroin) necessary for an injection.

2.
a skateboard or surfboard in the jargon of aficionados

deck up
vb

to prepare for injection or to inject a drug, usually heroin. A phrase from the jargon of drug users and prisoners in the UK The verb derives from the noun
deck
, meaning a quantity of a narcotic.

decorators
n pl British See
have the decorators in

deep
adj

1.
unpleasant, inferior

2.
impressive, attractive

In both senses the word has been fashionable among black adolescents and their imitators since 2000. The usage may have originated in from the jargon of DJs and hip-hop aficionados, or from the codes of street gangs, or both.

deep-sea diver
n

a £5 note,
fiver
. A piece of London rhyming slang heard occasionally since about the mid-1970s.

deep-six
vb American

to bury, dispose of. The verb form, which has been common in American speech since the 1950s, derives from the earlier noun form ‘the deep six', an underworld euphemism for the grave. The ultimate origin is nautical; burials at sea have to be made in water that is more than six fathoms deep.

‘“I've got to exchange all this money!” “You can deep-six it, sir”.'
(
M.A.S.H.
, US TV series, 1977)

deets
n pl

details, specifics

Gimme the deets
.

def
adj

excellent, wonderful, ‘the real thing'. A late 1980s vogue term of approbation deriving from the language of
hip hop
. The word is a shortening of ‘definitive' or ‘definite'. The use of the word as the title of a BBC2 ‘youth slot' programme (
DEF II
) in 1988 marked its apogee.
Det
is a more recent synonym.

‘This month's music selections are frightfully def, totally treach and all those other hip hop clichés.'
(
I-D
magazine, November 1987)

de facto
n Australian

a live-in lover, one's unmarried partner. This phrase is one Australian solution (since the 1970s) to the problem of finding an acceptable term to describe what the British judicial system calls a ‘common-law spouse'.

‘My de facto's out buying groceries.'
(Recorded, young woman, Melbourne, 1978)

defecately
adv
,
exclamation American

a facetious alteration of ‘definitely', defined in a 2012 posting on
Urban Dictionary
as ‘a more dignified way to say “Shit Yeah!” so you don't sound uneducated in the presence of others'

deffo
adv

an affirmation or agreement. The abbreviation of definitely is in widespread use online and in speech.

de-frosted
adj American

heated, agitated. An adolescents' term, inspired by the opposite notion of
cool
or
chilled out
.

Come on, don't get all de-frosted
.

dekko
n British

a look, glance. A word that probably originated in the jargon of tramps, taken from the Romany word for ‘look',
dik
, in the late 19th century. British soldiers overseas also encountered the Hindustani version
dekko
. The word is now less popular than in the 1950s but is still heard in the phrase ‘take/have a dekko (at)'. The word is not unknown, but is rare in American slang, where it has been recorded as ‘decko'.
See also
dick
²
2

Delhi belly
n

an attack of diarrhoea. Since the era of British colonialism this has been the South Asian equivalent of
gyppy tummy
,
Montezuma's revenge
, etc.

delicious
adj British

(of a person) attractive, often deliberately mispronounced as ‘delshous'. The term is used typically by teenage girls and students of both sexes.

dementoid, demental
n
,
adj American

(a person who is) crazy, demented. A high-school term of the 1980s that expressed contempt, grudging admiration or both. The word is also used adjectivally, as in ‘that was a totally dementoid movie'.

dench
adj British

excellent. Postings on Twitter claim that the term ‘…
dench
was invented by rapper Lethal Bizzle, and has since become the name of a clothing range which he launched with Arsenal midfielder Emmanuel Frimpong' and ‘It is unknown whether the word was inspired by British national treasure actress Dame Judi Dench, but the two have become inextricably intertwined.'

deng
adj British

unattractive. The opposite of
peng
. Used in street-gang code and its imitations since around 2010.

dental floss (pants)
n British

variant forms of the American
floss

derk, durk
n British

a stupid person. Used by younger teenagers, the words are formed from or influenced by
dork
,
nerd
and
durr-brain
.

dero
n Australian

a homeless person or tramp, a derelict. The term has been in use for about twenty years. It is also heard as a fairly mild insult among children and adolescents.

derro
n British

1.
an unfortunate, inferior or unpleasant person. A derivation from ‘derelict', used either of vagrants or of someone pitied or disliked.

‘And touching someone when you're dancing, Caris intimates, is the act of a derro, a flo-to-tin' yup, a deadbeat, a homebug and a commuter.'
(
Observer
, Section 5, 7 May 1989)

2.
a
derry

derry, deri
n British

a derelict building or similar location, used as a temporary shelter by tramps, etc.

‘It's not a derry, guy, there are people living there.'
(Recorded, vagrant, Waterloo, London, 1988)

desi
n
,
adj South Asian

(someone who is) local, indigenous. The term is used in the UK, sometimes pejoratively, by younger or supposedly sophisticated speakers to refer to traditionalists or recent immigrants.

Compare
freshi

Desmond
n British

a lower second university degree, a 2.2 (two-two). This is a student's witticism playing on the name of the black South African community leader Bishop Desmond Tutu. The word was in vogue in 1986 and gave rise to a number of other joky euphemisms, such as
Douglas
,
Pattie
,
Taiwan
,
Richard
, etc.

‘We all expected Penny to get a James but she ended up with a Desmond.'
(
Evening Standard
, June 1988)

destroyed
adj

intoxicated by alcohol or illicit drugs. A widespread colloquialism which has been particularly popular among middle-class speakers since the late 1960s. The word continues the dramatic tendency evidenced by such usages as
smashed
,
bombed
,
wrecked
, etc.