IF YOURE INTERESTED

LIST OF TERMS.

ABRAHAM’S BOSOM, TO BE IN or REST IN – To be dead and With God.  ‘And it came to pass that the beggar (Lazarus) died and was carried by the angel into Abraham’s Bosom.’  Luke 16:22.

BANANA OIL – Insincere or foolish talk.  Twentieth century American euphemism much younger than the fruit (1563).

BART, A – Australian term from 1882 meaning girl of loose character.

B GIRL, A – Prostitute who works in bars or clubs.

BOY – Heroin.

BLACK AND WHITE MINSTRELS – Amphetamines.

BUSTLE PINCHING – Attempting to rub up against a woman.  A British police term from the 1830’s.

            CLARET JUG, TO CRACK THE – To have a nosebleed.  Used in boxing circles since 1840. 

            CORNIFICATION – The final stages of sexual arousal.  Originally a eighteenth century term coined by upper class Dandies.

            CREEK, TO BE BLOWN OVER or GONE ACROSS  or OVER THE – To die, normally of unnatural causes.  Nineteenth century American expression still in use originating from the munitions industry, particularly with the Du Pont gun powder factories along the rivers in Pennsylvania and Delaware.  Often the powder ignited and blew workers literally over or across the creek or river.

CREPE HANGER, A – Professional pessimist.  The tradition of hanging crepe around someone as a sign of grief goes back to 1763.

DISCUSSING UGANDA – Fornicating.  British euphemism dating from 1580.

DOG SOMEONE AROUND, TO – To Treat badly or be unfaithful.

DO JIGGERS – Male genitals, specifically testicles.

DOUGHUT, GOLDEN – Female genitals.  Australian expression dating from the seventies.

EIGHT PAGER, AN – Comic style eight page, or longer, pornographic book.  An expression used to evade American censors.

ELDERS – Breasts.

EYES or BIG BROWN EYES – Breasts or nipples.  ‘She’s got a nice pair of eyes’ has been an expression used in England since the forties.

            FORM, YOU’RE SHOWING YOUR – Revealing naked flesh.  American expression from the thirties.

            GIRL – Cocaine.

            GORGING OUT – Committing suicide.  This term comes from Cornell University in Ithaca, New York.  According to the New York Times, July 18 1980, Gorging Out is a current euphemism for student suicides committed by jumping off bridges in the area when exams are failed.

            GOSPEL, TO LEAVE BEFORE THE – To go and have sex.  Irish American euphemism.

            GREEN NEEDLE, THE – A lethal injection of cyanide.  Cyanide causes the skin to turn a blue-green.

            HAMPTON WICK – The penis.  Derived from nineteenth century rhyming slang.

HAPPY DISPATCH – English term, a jocular name for Hari Kari.

HECTORS PECKING – Hugging, kissing, fondling etc.  Australian and Cockney rhyming slang for necking.

JEHU, A – A fast and reckless driver.  ‘and the driving is like the driving Jehu, son of Nimshi; for he driveth furiously.’  II Kings 9:20.

            JIM DOG – The penis.  A Southern dialectal euphemism, the male equivalent of Tom Cat.

            JIMMY BRITS or JIMMIES, THE – Anxiety attack or temper tantrum.  Australian rhyming slang for ‘shits’.  Derived from the name of a boxer Jimmy Brit, who toured Australia in 1918.

            KANGEROOS IN HIS/HER TOP PADDOCK, TO HAVE – To be insane, Australia, 1908. 

            LARRY DOOLEY, TO GIVE SOMEONE – To express anger, to beat someone up.  No one knows who Larry Dooley was but may be derived from the Australian boxer Larry Foley.

            LAVENDAR, TO LAY OUT IN – To be angry enough to knock someone down or kill them.  Derived from embalming a body with herbs.

            LICKERISH – Sexuality or sexual attractiveness.  ‘A lickerous mouth must have a lickerous tail.’  Chaucer’s Wife of Bath.

            LONG HOME, TO GO TO ONES – To die.  Common pulpit expression originating with the King James Bible in 1611.  ‘the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail; because man goeth to his long home, and the mourners go about the streets.’  Ecclesiastes 12:5.

            LUDLAM’S DOG, LAZY AS – A mythical beast who personifies sloth.  Originated in 1660 and described a household pet who leaned against a wall to bark.

            MARY or LITTLE MARY –  Twentieth century personification of the stomach.  ‘I’m willing but Mary isn’t.’

            NEGATIVE PATIENT CARE OUTCOME – To die.  Term coined by the Reagan administration in the 1980’s.  Nothing in life is certain ‘but negative patient care outcome and income enhancement.’

            NIGHT BASEBALL – Current American euphemism for sex or romantic encounters.

            NIXON, A – A low quality, low potency drug passed off as a pure, powerful drug.  A term deriving from the way some American voters would not ‘buy used goods from that man.’

            NORKS – Australian euphemism derived from the wrapping on Norco butter that featured a cows udder.  ‘Hello, honey, that sweater – one deep breath and your norks will be in my soup.’  Criena Rohan, The Delinquents, 1962.

            OBLOMOVISM – Overwhelming sluggishness.  Oblomov, in Ivan Goncharov’s (1812-91) novel of the same name, was a wealthy Russian landowner who took to his bed early in the novel and, in an act symbolic of the indolence of his class and of the passivity of the Russian character as conceived by the author, stayed there until the end.

            OWL, TO TAKE THE – Popular in England during the late eighteenth to mid nineteenth centuries.  Now obsolete.  Meaning to get angry.

            PRAYER BONES – Knees.  Knee Bender is an underworld and hobo term for a church goer or self-righteous person.

            RAINY DAY WOMAN – A Marijuana cigarette.

SPITFIRE, A – Hot-tempered person, usually a woman but not always.  ‘malignant spit-fires do already write books full of palpable lies against other men’  Richard Baxter in Catholic Communion Defended, 1680.

TEN O’CLOCK SCHOLAR – Lazy or tardy person.            

‘A dillar a dollar a ten o’clock scholar,

What makes you come so soon?

You used to come at ten

And now you come at noon’

            Mother Goose (English translation, ca 1744)

            TOM CAT - Female genitals.  Female equivalent of Jim Dog.  Southern dialectal euphemism used in talking to children.

            TOP – Breasts.

            TRENCHERMAN – Hearty eater.  ‘Millidore tried himself so tall a trencherman that his mother perceived he would not die for love.’  Greene in Never Too Late, 1590.

            VISITOR, TO HAVE A – The implication behind the euphemism is that a woman’s period is an unexpected event.

            WHITE NURSE – Morphine.

            WOODSER, A JIMMY or JOHNNIE – Australian term for a person who drinks alone first used in 1892.  Based on James Wood, a sheep shearer in the 1880’s infamous for going to bars by himself.