Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (75 page)

b.
a gunman The latter meaning is now more widely encountered, but the former, with overtones of punkishness, comes from the Yiddish slang for young man (
gantsel
or
ganzl
: ‘gosling') and was the sense in which it was used in crime novels and
film noir
in the 1930s. The second meaning is based on a misreading of the first.

guppy
n

an environmental
yuppie
. A journalese coinage blending ‘green' and ‘yuppie', inspired by the popular tropical fish.

gurgle
n British

(an) alcoholic drink. A fairly predictable euphemism, used typically by pub habitués and other hearty drinkers. It is probably influenced by
gargle
.

‘Fancy popping down to the Swan for a bit of a gurgle?'
(Recorded, middle-aged drinker, Pangbourne, 1986)

gurgler
n Australian

a toilet. The term is sometimes used figuratively in the phrase ‘down the gurgler', meaning ruined, lost or failed.

gurk
vb
,
n

a.
British
(to) belch, burp

b.
Australian
(to)
fart

Imitative words used, mainly by children, since the 1950s.

gurner
n

a tablet of
ecstasy
. The term was in use among UK students and others from the late 1990s.

gurning
adj British

intoxicated by drugs or drink. The term was popular among adolescents and students from the later 1990s and refers particularly to someone feeling the ill effects of drugs. It is inspired by the verb to ‘gurn' (from Middle English
girn
, a form of ‘grin'), which means to pull grotesque faces.

‘Look at Gemma, she is properly gurning man…'
(Recorded, art student, UK, 2002)

gussied-up
adj

smartly dressed, neatly turned out. The term is common in American speech and is heard elsewhere. It may have originated in Australian usage and is possibly based on the names Augustus, Gus or Gussie as supposedly denoting an effeminate or fussy male.

‘Well, you're all gussied-up.'
(
Curaçao
, US film, 1993)

gut-rot
n

a cheap, low-quality alcoholic drink. This phrase is probably more widespread in Britain and Australia than the alternative

rot-gut
. Unlike rot-gut, it is occasionally also used to refer to food.

gutsache
n

a miserable, complaining person, a
misery-guts
. The expression is particularly popular in Australia, but is also heard in Britain. The image evoked is of someone perpetually suffering from dyspepsia or provoking indigestion in others.

gutser, gutzer
n Australian See
come a gutser

gutted
adj British

a.
devastated, deeply disappointed, saddened or shocked. A vogue word among working-class and lower-middle-class speakers since the late 1980s, perhaps encouraged by the over-use of the word by sportsmen and sports commentators. The concept has also been expressed subsequently by the alternatives
kippered
and
filleted
.

‘24 hours before work on the commercial was due to start the answer came from Central. It was no. After all those years – just no. I was gutted.'
(Paul “Benny” Henry,
News of the World
, 8 January 1989)

b.
used as an exclamation. By the end of 1990 the term had become a schoolchildren's catchphrase, used as a shout of victory or defiance, meaning ‘I have humiliated you' or ‘you have been shamed'. The form ‘gutted out' is also heard.

gutter, gutta
adj American

streetwise, tough, authentic. The term, recorded from 2004, is defined by one informant as ‘displaying the characteristics of
gangsta
,
hood
,
ghetto
identity'.

Yo! That dude is gutter as hell.

gutters
n British

an unattractive female. A synonym for
butters
and
dog
, in the jargon of clubland recorded from the early 1990s.

‘An out and out gutters.'
(
Touch
magazine, September 1993)

gutty, gutsy
adj British

bold, brave or ‘bolshie'. A late 1980s coinage, popular in unsophisticated speech, which is a back-formation from the well-established colloquial sense of guts denoting courage.

guv
n British

a respectful term of address to a male, in working-class usage. Said invariably by, as well as to, men, guv is a shortening of the almost equally widespread
guvnor
, meaning boss.

guvnor, governor
n British

a boss, chief or leader. A descriptive term or term of address used by, to and about males in working-class speech. This widespread colloquial form of governor arose in the early 19th century and shows no sign of dying out. Governor, then spelt correctly, was recorded as a slang term for one's employer as early as 1802; Charles Dickens later referred to it as a slang synonym for ‘old man' or ‘boss' when referring to one's father. In the 1980s it acquired a further nuance in the form ‘the guvnor' as an acknowledged expert or leading exponent (for instance among rock musicians and fans).

‘I'll be alright 'cos I believe in the life hereafter. I mean, Jesus was the governor wasn't he?'
(East Ender,
Sunday Times
, 2 June 1968)

gwap, gwop
n

money. The terms are used in
hip hop
slang in the USA.

gweeb, gweebo
n American

a stupid, dull person. A late 1980s variation on
dweeb
, coined by teenagers. It is probably unrelated to the British
grebo
.

gwot
n American

a contemptible person. This high-school term of great distaste, heard since the late 1980s, is an invention, obviously influenced by other evocations of unpleasantness such as grotesque,
weed
,
twat
, etc.

‘Oh God, not him, he's such a gwot.'
(
Some Kind of Wonderful
, US film, 1987)

gyaldem
n British

an alternative version of
galdem

gyppo, gippo
n

1.
a gypsy

2.
an Egyptian. A neutral rather than pejorative term in origin, gyppo was, and is, sometimes extended in uneducated speech to encompass other Arabs or Muslims.

3.
British
a vulgar, poor and/or unsophisticated person. One of a number of pejorative terms (such as
chav
,
pikey
,
skeg
) in vogue since 2003.

H
n

heroin. This was the most popular term among British drug users in the 1950s and 1960s before being supplanted by
smack
,
scag
,
brown
etc.

He's been on H for years.

hack
n

1.
a journalist, professional writer. The word, inspired by the image of a worn-out workhorse, has traditionally denoted a disreputable, unprincipled, mercenary reporter or writer. Since the late 1960s, if not earlier, journalists have appropriated it to refer to themselves proudly rather than self-deprecatingly. Hack is still used in publishing as a simple descriptive term for a journeyman writer prepared to tackle any subject, as distinct from a specialist.

2.
British
an excessively ambitious student. In the slang of Oxford and Cambridge universities this is the undergraduate equivalent of the many school-children's synonyms for
swot
.

3.
a cough, particularly a dry, rasping cough. The word imitates the sound in question.

hacked-off, hacked
adj

annoyed, irritated, resentful. From the late 1980s, this phrase has enjoyed something of a vogue as a replacement for the better-known ‘brassed-off', ‘cheesed-off' and as a euphemism for
pissed-off
. It has been recorded in both the USA and Britain since the early 1950s.

hacker
n

1.
someone who
hacks into
a computer system. The hacking in question is the evocation of a person chopping their way through dense undergrowth to their destination. Hacker in this sense appeared as part of data-processing jargon in the early 1980s. Spectacular instances of the penetration of computerised systems brought the word to public awareness.

2.
a taxi driver. A ‘hackney cab' (the archaic version of taxi cab) takes its name from ‘hackney', meaning a horse used for transportation. The short version of the phrase survives in this sense.

3.
a clumsy worker. Here hack evokes chopping clumsily, rather than handling or cutting finely.

hackette
n British

a female journalist. A jocular term coined by journalists (on the basis of
hack
) and popularised in the 1980s by
Private Eye
magazine (who referred to society gossip columnist Lady Olga Maitland as ‘the fragrant hackette') among others.

hack into
vb See
hacker

hack it
vb

to succeed, to manage (in spite of adversity). A slang usage which remained relatively obscure until the early 1980s, since when it has become a common colloquialism. The original sense of hack is uncertain here; it may mean to drive, to strive or to chop (one's way through).

The poor guy's finished, he just can't hack it anymore.

had up
adj British

insulted, publicly humiliated. Used in street-gang code and its imitations since around 2010.

hag
n

a disreputable, promiscuous and/or irritating female

hagsay
n
,
vb British

(a)
shag
in
pig Latin
, in secondary school usage

ha-ha
n British

marihuana or hashish (cannabis), or another ‘euphoric' drug. A light-hearted reference by middle-class soft-drug users to the hilarity induced by smoking, ingesting or sniffing the chosen substance.

hairball
n American

an unpleasant and/or despicable person, by analogy with something vomited by a cat. The phrase owes its usage from the 1980s partly to the fact that, while offensive, it is not obscene and can therefore be
used in television dramas and by children in the presence of adults.

haircut
n

a financial loss, usually one that is unplanned, unwelcome and/or imposed. A long-standing item of business slang.

‘Cypriot savers have it cushy. We've had worse haircuts in Britain.'
(
Daily Telegraph
, 19 March 2013)

hairy, herry, herrie
n Scottish

a female. The term is almost invariably pejorative and often refers to an unattractive or troublesome young woman. It is said to derive from the fact that the poorer female inhabitants of Glasgow in the 1930s and 1940s could not afford hats (then
de rigueur
for respectable women), thereby exposing their hair to onlookers.

Mick was off wi' a wee herrie, so I'm told.

hairy-arsed, hairy-assed
adj British

wild, primitive, uncouth or rugged. A term in armed-forces and middle-class use which is often, but by no means always, appreciative in tone.

‘I am not some hairy-arsed Viking from the North bent on a bit of rape and pillage.'
(John Ashworth, Director of the LSE, quoted in the
Independent
, 5 January 1995)

half a bar
n British

before decimalisation in 1971 half a bar was ten shillings; since then it has meant fifty pence. The phrase is London working class or cockney. ‘Bar' is an archaic term, still occasionally heard in London, coming from a Romany word (
bar
or
baur(o)
) meaning a sovereign and, later, one pound.

half-arsed, half-assed
adj

ill-considered, incomplete, ineffectual. An expression which appeared in British and American usage around the turn of the 20th century. The term may originate in the notion of something which has less than a whole solid base or, according to a more fanciful theory, derive from a jocular deformation of ‘haphazard'. In modern British speech it is sometimes used as a more vulgar version of half-hearted (its more probable inspiration).

‘I'd rather write nothing than something half-arsed. There are far too many half-arsed books in the world.'
(Novelist Dan Rhodes, interviewed in the
Guardian
, 9 April 2003)

hamburger
n British

the vagina. A vulgarism in use among adolescents in the 1990s and listed in
Viz
comic in 1994.
Furburger
is a (probably earlier) synonym.