Read Dictionary of Contemporary Slang Online
Authors: Tony Thorne
3.
American
a dupe. This term, heard in the 1990s in street argot, is probably taken from the proper name supposedly denoting a quintessential âsucker'.
(H)erbert
is the British equivalent.
herbal, herbals
n
marihuana. The term is a predictable borrowing of one component of the official designation âherbal cannabis' for the leaves and flowers of the plant sold and consumed loose, as opposed to compacted into hashish. It had partly supplanted the form
(h)erb
by the later 1990s.
âDidn't any of them enjoy a lug on the herbals?'
(
Q
magazine, March 1997)
Herbert
n British See
'erbert
her indoors
n British
one's wife, female partner or boss. A London working-class circumlocution which was popularised by its use in the TV series
Minder
(broadcast between 1979 and 1988). The expression has established itself as a facetious or ironic reference
to an unseen (and by implication oppressive) female presence.
âAll right I'll stop off for a quick drink, but for God's sake don't tell her indoors.'
(Recorded, teacher, London, 1988)
Hershey highway
n American
the anus. The expression, usually heard in connection with homosexual behaviour, uses the brand name of chocolate bars like its British equivalent,
Bourneville boulevard
.
het
n
,
adj British
(a person who is) heterosexual
They wouldn't understand, they're all hets.
It's a strictly het affair.
hey diddle diddle
n
an act of urination, a
piddle
. A piece of rhyming slang in use in London and Australia. (
Jimmy Riddle
is a more common alternative.) The words are from the first line of a well-known nursery rhyme.
hickey
n American
a.
a love bite
âI like your date, Sam. Be careful she doesn't lose a baby tooth when she's giving you a hickey.'
(
Cheers
, US TV comedy series, 1986)
b.
a spot or other skin blemish
Hicksville
n American
a backward provincial place. A racier version of âhick town', based on âhick' meaning rustic or unsophisticated. (Hick was originally a diminutive of Richard, influenced by âhickory'.)
H.I.D.
n British
an abbreviated form of
her indoors
used by City financial traders during the 1990s
hide the sausage/salami/weenie
vb
to have sexual intercourse. Usually preceded by âplay', these phrases are adult imitations of baby talk, used facetiously since the late 1960s. The first version is British and Australian, the second and third American.
hidren
n Caribbean
a good friend. The term is an alteration of, or synonym for,
bredren
.
Idren
is an alternative form.
high
adj
intoxicated by alcohol or drugs, euphoric. The expression âhigh as a kite' preceded the shorter usage which became widespread in the late 1960s.
high on life
I feel like getting high.
high five (someone)
vb American
to slap raised palms and fingers together as a ritual greeting. The custom and the expression appeared in the black community in the 1970s and was subsequently adopted by sportspeople and adolescents in general.
high-hat
vb American
to behave condescendingly or âhigh-hand-edly' (towards someone). A fairly rare but long-established expression. The silent-film star Clara Bow claimed that more sedate members of the Hollywood community high-hatted her.
high muckamuck
n American See
muckamuck
hike
vb
,
n
(to make) a departure or journey
Take a hike.
It's time to hike.
hill-billy
adj British
chilly
. An item of rhyming slang that probably originated in Glasgow rather than London.
It's a bit hill-billy in here.
hilljack
n American
a redneck, hillbilly, person from the âdeep south' of the USA. The term was in use on campuses in 2002.
himbo
n
a male
bimbo
. An item of journalese that was adopted into general speech in the 1990s.
Bimboy
is a synonym.
Hinglish
The most visible â or rather, audible â example of something trumpeted as a new dialect and dubbed Hinglish (from Hindi or Indian English), the jocular phrases âKiss my chuddies!' or âEat my chuddies!', where
chud-dies
denotes underpants, have been celebrated by journalists and lexicographers. As Anushka Asthana announced in the
Observer
in 2004, under the headline âWelcome to the Queen's Hinglish', âAsian “yoof-speak” is spicing up English, with Hindi words such as
gora
and slang such as
innit
entering the dictionary and experts predicting an explosive impact of the language used by second-generation immigrants.' Limited hybrid forms of English have grown up wherever it âinterfaces' with speakers of other languages: Franglais is still the best known, but Span-glish, spoken on the Costa Brava in particular, and Chinglish, heard in China and among students in the UK, are other examples. And let's not overlook the claims of Honklish and Singlish too. âLah! All those dynamic Chuppies (Chinese-speaking upwardly-mobile people) can't be wrong!' (the reference is to Hong Kong and Singapore varieties, from a posting on the BBC website in 2009). âPonglish', essentially a smattering
of English words mingled with Polish, is fashionable both for Polish workers in the UK and returnees in some circles in Poland. So-called Hinglish is nothing new, as South Asians, familiar with if not completely fluent in English for historical reasons, and often operating with several ânative' dialects, have been âcode-switching' â the linguists' term for mixing languages â for centuries. As Kiran Chauhan from Leicester wrote in the same online discussion, âWe have always used a mix of English, Gujarati and Swahili in our everyday language: it is so embedded that we do not realise it⦠It's great listening to people in Kenya and those here as well those from India. We just mix more as we expand use of the internet as well.'
Hinglish is a blanket term for a vocabulary that actually incorporates Panjabi, Urdu and Bengali elements. As a recent linguistic phenomenon it is closely associated with so-called
MLE
, the youth âdialect' observed by some researchers, which is transforming the accent and intonation of youth in London and elsewhere. The vast majority of youth slang, however, still originates in Afro-Caribbean speech, as speakers of those varieties enjoy maximum street credibility â in inverse proportion to their mainstream social standing. As young Asians become
cooler
in the eyes of peers, so their slang is likely to have greater impact, a trend highlighted by Gautam Malkani's 2007 novel
Londonstani
. The TV comedy series
Goodness Gracious Me
and
The Kumars at No. 42
have simultaneously brought Asian speech patterns to a cross-section audience. Borrowing from Hindi, etc. into English has been taking place since first contact with the subcontinent: examples are thug, verandah, bungalow, bangle and shampoo, and, of course the recycled term of approval beloved of Mockney Jamie Oliver, and used by teenagers since the late 1990s,
pukka
.
Chuddi
itself is Hindi slang and probably comes from
churidar
, denoting traditional tight-fitting trousers.
As well as chuddies, which persists, sometimes in the admonition, âDon't get your chuddies in a twist', and can also now mean buttocks, current youth slang has the unrelated noun
chuddy
, which in the UK denotes chewing gum (as do
chuttie
and
chuffie
), and in the USA a close friend (blending chum and
buddy
). As an adjective the same word means unattractive, ugly or badly designed;
the chuddy
, on the other hand, is a term of appreciation meaning superb, first class.
hinky, hincky
adj American
1.
inspiring doubt or suspicion; of uncertain loyalty, origin, etc. This term of unknown derivation is roughly equivalent to the British
dodgy
2.
cute and/or neat
hip
adj
a.
in touch with current trends, up-to-date, culturally aware. This word co-existed with, and then supplanted,
hep
in the 1960s in the argot of musicians,
beatniks
and other bohemians. It implied identification with an ideal of
cool
behaviour characterised by a nonchalant, enlightened detachment and a rejection of âbourgeois' values.
âNow, the truly hip stay at home with the baby and open a bottle of wine with a couple of friends; if they do go out, they dress down in T-shirts, jeans and sneakers.'
(
Sunday Times
, 9 July 1989)
b.
aware, âin the know'. Hip, now divested of its counterculture overtones, is used in popular speech to denote an unspoken understanding of a certain state of affairs.
There's no need to give me all this bullshit, man. I'm hip to what's going down.
hip hop
n American
an influential musical style originating in US black and Hispanic inner city street and club culture along with its associated fashions and attitudes
The movement began in the South Bronx in the 1970s and incorporated graffiti, breakdancing, scratching and Dj-ing, the wearing of emblematic clothing and accessories, and
rapping
. US lexicographer Tom Dalzell has noted that the exact origin of the term is unclear; âDisco Fever club DJ Lovebug Starski, Afrika Bambaataa of the Universal Zulu Nation, Club 371's DJ Hollywood, and Keith “Cowboy” Wiggins of Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five are all said to have coined the term⦠but proof is scant. The earliest recorded usage found to date is from the 1979 song
Rapper's Delight
â¦' Hip hop has generated (or rather perhaps âappropriated' or embraced, as terms are taken from the street and, without much embellishment, disseminated to a wider audience) an enormous slang lexicon, ranging from restricted technical terms such as
throw-up
(a graffiti artwork), to key items in youth culture parlance such as re-spellings like
phat
and
shizzle
and words such as
bling
,
hoodie
,
nigga
,
ho
, and
rap
itself. In rap music especially and in hip hop culture the word has more prominence than is usual in rock, dance or pop styles and ownership of slang is an essential component in the symbolic repertoire of self-expression that also incorporates hairstyles, clothing, flaunting of accessories and consumer luxuries, and even stance and gait.
hippie
n American
a term of address or endearment, usually for a male
hippy, hippie
n
a proponent and member of the âalternative society' or counterculture movement which opposed orthodox bourgeois values during the late 1960s. The hippy movement
was a much more widely based successor to the
hipster
and
beatnik
tendency, reaching public notice in California in 1966. By the summer of 1967 (known as the âSummer of Love') manifestations of hippiedom had spread to Britain. True hippies never referred to themselves as such, but rather as
freaks
or
heads
; the term was originally a slightly condescending nickname (based on
hip
or hipster) bestowed by older musicians and other bohemians.
âIn punk's style degradation, there is still no worse insult than “hippie”.'
(
Observer
, 24 May 1977)
hipster
n
a.
a culturally aware person, a
cool
bohemian. Predecessors to the
hippies
of the late 1960s, hipsters were the aficionados of jazz, Eastern philosophy, modernist art-forms, etc., who themselves succeeded the
hepcats
of the 1940s and 1950s. Hipster and
beatnik
are, in a historical perspective, almost identical, although the word hipster, unlike beatnik, was used by those in question to describe themselves. For the etymology of the word, see
hep
.
b.
American
a member of a loosely defined, highly self-conscious subculture who favours, e.g., retro fashions and obscure musical styles. This new incarnation of the hipster, typically a young adult male and portrayed wearing heavy-framed glasses, is often derided as pretentious, tiresomely ironic and/or
neeky
.
âHipster-hate blogs are multiplying online. But who are these much-maligned trendies â and why do people find them so irritating? Perhaps we should learn to love our skinny-jeaned friends instead.'
(Alex Rayner writing in the
Guardian
, 14 October 2010)