Dictionary of Contemporary Slang (77 page)

a hardcore guy/scene
acting/playing hardcore

hard-off
n American

an unstimulating, disappointing person, experience or sensation. The term, coined by analogy with
hard-on
, is used by members of both sexes.

hard-on
n

a.
an erection. To ‘have a hard-on' has been the most common way of expressing male sexual tumescence since the early 20th century. It derives from a slightly earlier adjectival form (to be ‘hard-on') which follows a pattern of Victorian euphemism which includes ‘fetch off' (to have sex or an orgasm), etc.

‘Don't go home with your hard-on/It will only drive you insane.'
(Lyrics from “Don't go home with your hard-on”, Leonard Cohen and Phil Spector, 1977)

b.
a sudden strong desire or affection. This specialised sense is a piece of
macho
business jargon from the late 1970s. It suggests an aggressive and uncompromising wish to acquire or cement relations with, e.g., a business partner.

I think Ingrams is nursing a hard-on for United Mills.

hard word, the
n

a.
a rejection or condemnation

‘It was the one thing that would bring Christina [Onassis] and her father together again. It was only a matter of time before Christina gave me the hard word.'
(Joseph Bolker quoted in
Heiress
, by Nigel Dempster, 1989)

b.
a difficult request or ultimatum, particularly a demand for money or sex

The phrase is normally part of longer expressions such as ‘put the hard word on' or ‘give someone the hard word'. The origin of the expression is obscure, but it is most prevalent in Australian use.

harf, hark
vb American

to vomit. Echoic terms in use among students in 2003.
Hork
is a variant form.

haricot (bean)
n Australian

a male homosexual. Rhyming slang on
queen
.

Harold Ramp, Harold
n British

a rhyming-slang term for
tramp
or homeless person, popular since 2000. The proper name seems to be an invention for the purposes of the rhyme.

harolds
n pl Australian

trousers or underpants. The etymology of this jocular usage is unclear: it is thought to originate in rhyming slang based on a real or imaginary proper name such as ‘Harold Taggs/Wraggs':
bags
.

harpic
adj British

crazy, deranged. A pun which was popular for instance among schoolchildren in the 1960s. The person so described was ‘clean round the bend', from the slogan of the Harpic toilet cleaning preparation which claimed in a TV advertisement to ‘clean round the hidden bend'. The word was used on
Whacko!
, a parody of public-school life starring the late Jimmy Edwards.

harry
n British

heroin. An addicts' term from the 1960s, personifying the drug in the same way as
charlie
for cocaine.

harry-
prefix British

a prefix used in public-school, university and armed-services' slang, almost always by males, to add jocular familiarity to a standard term. It is often used in conjunction with the
-er(s)
word ending. The
-er(s)
form is probably earlier; ‘harry-' seems to have originated in armed-forces speech pre-World War II.

Fiona's harry-preggers again.

harry-starkers
adj British

naked. An upper-class or armed-services jocularity.

harsh
adj

1.
American
unpleasant, inferior. An allpurpose negative, a vogue term among Californian adolescents in the mid-1990s and fashionable in UK usage in the 2000s (satirised by the TV comedians Mitchell and Webb) principally in the sense of unfair or cruel.

2.
good, impressive. In this reversed or ironic sense, recorded among British
mods
of the 1960s and US high-school and
college students of the 1990s, the word is one of a large set of near-synonyms including
savage
,
brutal
,
tough
, etc., which have been adopted into adolescent codes.

Hasselhoff
n

an otherwise inexplicable injury, or a bizarre explanation for such an injury, or a patient who gives doctors in accident and emergency such an explanation. The medical slang was coined after former
Baywatch
actor David Hasselhoff claimed in 2006 that he had hit his head on a chandelier while shaving. (The broken glass severed four tendons as well as an artery in his right arm).

hassle
vb
,
n

(to subject someone to) bother, harassment, intrusive complications. This term had existed in American English since the 19th century; in the 1960s it formed part of the
hip
and counterculture jargon which became established throughout the anglophone community. In origin it is either a blend of ‘harass' or ‘haggle' and ‘tussle' or ‘wrestle', an anglicisation of the synonymous French verb
harceler
or, more convincingly, a version of
hustle
. In Britain hassle replaced hustle as a vogue term among
beatniks
and
mods
in about 1967.

hat
n American

a condom.
Jim(my)-hat
is an alternative form.

hatch
vb British

to drink, drain one's glass. A matter-of-fact beer-drinkers' term, derived from the exclamation ‘down the hatch!'.

‘I think we'd better hatch these [beers] and get going.'
(Recorded, wedding guest, Bristol, 1988)

hate on (someone)
vb American

to be jealous of (someone). An expression used on campus in the USA since around 2000.

hater
n American

a jealous or envious person. An expression used on campus in the USA since around 2000, and especially online.

‘F the haters: why the pop frenzy of Baz's Great Gatsby makes it the most modern film around.'
(
Dazed Digital
Newsletter, 16 May 2013)

hatstand
adj British
crazy, eccentric, deranged. The nonsense term was invented by the comic
Viz
for the character Roger Irrelevant and was adopted into student slang in the late 1990s.

He's completely hatstand and always has been.

haul ass
vb

to get moving, go into action. An Americanism, usually in the form of a command or exhortation, which has been heard in British and Australian speech since the 1980s.

haul off
vb American

to get ready to strike someone or to launch an attack. The term may be used literally (of leaning back before aiming a blow) or figuratively.

have a cow
vb American

to throw a tantrum, become extremely agitated. An expression used on campus in the USA since around 2000. The analogy is probably with the colloquial ‘having kittens'.

have a lend (of someone)
vb Australian

to deceive, bamboozle, lie about. The phrase is related to older locutions such as ‘get a lend of/have a loan of' which refer to a dishonest individual taking advantage of another by borrowing from them.

‘You better be sure he's having a lend of you.'
(Recorded, Melbourne bus driver to adolescent passenger, 1995)

have a mare
vb British

to become angry, infuriated. The mare in question may be a shortening of nightmare, or the phrase is possibly a version of the American
have a cow
, evoking the pain of giving birth to something enormous. The expression was in use among London teenagers in 2000.

have it away, have it off
vb

to have sex. These phrases, which have been commonly used in Britain and Australia since the 1940s, seem to derive from an earlier sense of the same terms meaning to succeed in stealing or succeed in accomplishing (something illicit). There is also significant similarity with 19th-century sexual euphemisms such as ‘fetch off'. Both expressions are used by all social classes.

‘He later told me he'd had it off with a photographer the previous night and so wasn't much concerned with having it away himself.'
(Joe Orton's Diary, 14 May 1967)

have it (away) on one's toes
vb British
to escape, run away. A phrase from the repertoire of criminals, prisoners and the
police since the early 1950s. It was still current among these and working-class Londoners in the late 1980s.

have (someone) over
vb British

a.
to trick, dupe, deceive. A working-class euphemism related to the colloquialism ‘get one over on (someone)'.

‘Similar themes run through stories about social workers who are reckoned to be easily “had over” by “villains” and even by juvenile offenders.'
(
Inside the British Police
, Simon Holdaway, 1983)

‘I was a young geezer and I was trying to have the police over.'
(Vincent Hickey, released prisoner speaking on
Panorama
, 24 February 1997)

b.
to seduce. A specialised sense of the preceding usage, invariably referring to a male ‘taking advantage of' a female.

have the bomb
vb Australian

to be exhausted. The phrase may be related to the use of
bombed
, meaning incapacitated by drink or drugs.

have the decorators in, have the painters in
vb

to menstruate. A women's euphemism; both phrases are heard in Britain and Australia, the second version in the USA.

have the hots (for someone)
vb

to nurse a sexual desire for someone, to lust after. The phrase is a variation of other, now obsolescent phrases (to ‘be hot for', to ‘have the hot ass', etc.) in which hot equates with sexually excited. First heard in the USA in the 1960s, the term quickly spread to other English-speaking countries.

having it large, having it
n See
'avin' it large

Hawaii
n British

a £50 note or the sum of fifty pounds. A raffish expression inspired by
Hawaii-Five O
, the title of an American TV crime series of the 1970s.

I got him to do it, but it cost me a Hawaii.

hawk one's fork, hawk the fork
vb Australian

to sell one's body, engage in prostitution. A colourful vulgarism playing on the medieval sense of fork as the join of the legs. In archaic British slang ‘hawk one's mutton' and ‘hawk one's meat' were terms with the same meaning.

hay
n

a.
a homosexual person

b.
a heterosexual with
gay
mannerisms or appearance.

Compare
metrosexual

hazing
n American

teasing or humiliation, especially as part of a student initiation rite. An American version of the British ‘ragging', but often with less light-hearted overtones. The word originated in naval use where it meant to oppress or harass. It probably has no etymological connection with other senses of haze, deriving instead from the archaic French
haser
, meaning to irritate.

head
n

1.
an aficionado of the drug-using counter-culture, a drug-user. A word used by
hippies
to refer to themselves. The term originally simply meant a person or individual in the slang of black jazz musicians and, later, white
hipsters
.

‘Those were the days of heads and freaks. And if getting high was where it was at, then Vietnam was the ultimate trip.'
(Michael Herr,
Observer
, 15 January 1989)

2.
a toilet. This is the singular form of
the heads
, the earlier designation for shipboard latrines.

3.
oral sex, particularly fellatio. The word in this sense is usually encountered in the phrase
give head
.

headbanger
n

a.
a devotee of heavy metal rock music who expresses excitement by frenzied shaking and even literal banging of the head in time to the music. The practice and term originated in the early 1970s.

b.
a person who behaves in a relentlessly frenzied or dangerous way. This usage, deriving from the first sense of the term, usually expresses a certain shocked admiration.

c.
a madman, psychotic,
headcase

headbanging
adj

a.
shaking or banging one's head in response to rock music

b.
behaving in a wild, unrestrained, relentless or excessive manner. The second, generalised sense is an extension of the first and was coined to describe the behaviour of (mainly male) rock-music fans in the early 1970s.

headcase
n

an unhinged or deranged person. The word, originally an Americanism of the early 1970s, is typically used by teenagers
to indicate awe or dismissive contempt; it rarely refers to the genuinely insane.