There are said to be about one million words in the English language, with about 170,000 in regular use. The average person only uses from 20,000 to 35,000. This of course will include a lot of slang.
The whole purpose of slang is to be used by a particular group so that they cannot be understood by others. Once slang lingo starts getting used in movies and songs, it gets picked up by young whippersnappers and middle class trendies and its usefulness becomes redundant, part of mainstream vocabulary.
A good example of this would be the word “screw” for prison guard. Prisoners had to come up with the new word kanga which is a rhyme of screw and kangaroo.
I have put together a glossary of prison slang terms taken from UK, US, Canadian and Australian sources. This might be the first of its kind. I have no idea which terms are still commonly used or which are confined to a particular region within each country. Some go back to Shakespeare’s days.
Many prison words are derived from cockney rhyming slang and Romani (gypsy dialects). British felons took these words with them to the USA in the 18th century, a little-known fact. This was well before they started shipping convicts to Australia. Americans used British slang words to begin with but many have died out, replaced by their own.
Words that originated in the UK I have put in italics. Aussie words are in capital letters. Words with asterisks are ones I (think) I made up myself. The rest are from North America.
There is a list of acronyms used by the UK police themselves. At the end, I have added a few anecdotes about the history of a particular word so that this is not just a mini phrase book.
I have avoided any words which are of a sexual nature. There are dozens. We need no reminding what depraved and inhuman places prisons are.
And I have arranged words by approximate frequency of use, with the standard word first, and grouped into themes to make them easier to read and remember.
jail – nick, clink, jug, slammer, bin, boob, stir, calaboose, crowbar hotel, country club, farm etc.
cell –cage, peter, pad, house, crib, SLOT
gang leader’s cell – grandma’s
bunk bed – cadillac
lock in a cell – bang up
prison clothes – blues
new prison clothes – bonaroo
cell search – spin, shakedown, rub-down
go to the toilet – time to feed the warden
toilet – gas house, dunny*
shower – splash, tank
inmate – cat, CRIM
new inmate – pumpkin, cherry; new booties, fish (if first time inside)
cellmate – cellie, bunkie
prison friend – road dog
best prison friend – ace boon coon
nerdy – programmer
weak – punk, baby
compliant – june bug, punk
lazy, unhygienic – viking, CHATTY
annoying – nerk/nirk, GRONK
talks too much – monkey mouth, bumpin’ ya gums
clueless – waterhead, not got a scooby
dangerous – righteous weapon
veteran – O.G. (stands for Old/Original Gangster).
cowardly – sucker ducker
influential – has the keys, juice card
reliable – solid
attracts scrutiny of guards – heat wave
never leaves cell – slug (that would be me)
know-it-all – kolboy* (from Yiddish kolboynick)
mixes outside own racial group – race traitor
prison guard – kanga, gov, boss, chief
new guard – cowboy, BAGGIE
untrustworthy guard – bug
easily bribable guard – duck
nasty or old guard – zombie
police – filth, ekky, coppers, the other people etc.
prison food – chow, nosh
biscuit – dobie (from adobe meaning mud brick)
biscuits and sweets – zoom zooms, wham whams
tea – diesel
coffee – mud
tobacco – snout, salmon, burn
cigarette – bat
cigarette end – littlefella
home-made knife – jammer, shiv, kessue, shank, blade
weapon – jaunt, april (fool, rhymes with tool)
carrying a weapon – strapped
stare – red eye, eyeball
get ready to fight – catch a square
a fight insult – goof
start a fight – take flight
to beat up – molly-whop, bang out, tear up
get beaten by a guard – tune up
acts tough – Big Billy Bollocks, Jack the Biscuit, Charlie Big Spuds
acts tough only in locked cell – cell warrior
talk tough – sell wolf tickets
escape a difficult situation – go through the slips (think cricket)
make a mistake – do abamber
gang/group – car, tip
gang meeting – roll call
get a tattoo – get buzzed
having tattoos – dotted up
fake item – jekyll (and Hyde rhymes with snide = fake), gerboyd*
for sale – on the line
place to hide contraband – prison safe
go into debt – ass out
paper money – green
solitary confinement – hole, box
punishment/ isolation area – block,down the brink, colosseum*, SEGRO, Siberia
exercise yard – echo
prison workshop – hobbit shop
pay phone – stress box
cellphone – ET*
psychiatric unit – ding-wing
mentally ill inmate – SPINNER, bug, ding, J-cat, wobble head, stir-crazy
go crazy – nut up, net up, chat out
commit suicide – do the dutch
psych meds – brake fluid, bug juice
act or feign craziness – gopsych
time in prison – bird (bird-lime rhymes with time)
prison sentence – bid, stir
to get released – catch the chain, gate out
short sentence – cat nap
one year sentence – bullett
three year sentence – carpet
five year sentence – nickel
ten year sentence – dime, hamburger
life sentence – all day, alphabet
very long sentence – Buck Rogers time
death sentence – big bitch, prize of the poor
wrongful imprisonment – bum beef
escape – jackrabbit/fence parole
very ill prisoner – BB (body bag) filler
to die in prison – get back door/gate parole
HIV – the ninja, blickey, monster
hepatitis C – high class
covid19 – the lurgy*, the coonies*
prison doctor – quack, croaker
chaplain – nicker (rhymes with vicar)
judge – vanilla (rhymes with fudge)
fat lazy slob (lawyer) – dump truck
woman – gashley
female guard – kitty kitty
general population – On The Out, GP, the line
skint – polo (rhymes with mint)
small, skinny – marga (Jamaican word)
many, a lot – bare
bullshit – jank, MBE* (Male Bovine Excrement)
eavesdropper – birds on the line
informant – snitch,rat jacket, cheese eater, DOG, chocolate frog, undies (undercover)
inform on an inmate – drop a slip
force your way into a conversation – dip in the cool
suck up to guard – ride leg
keep lookout – get jigs, cockatoo
gossip, rumour – inmate dot com
information – grapes
drugs – tit
drug addict – fiend
a habit – jones
injected drugs – HIT, BANG
heroin – chiva
heroin addict – bag head, tecato
heroin and cannabis – kit and green
synthetic marijuana – toochie
methamphetamine – crank
cocaine – soda
get high on another’s drugs – catch a ride
prison made alcohol – spud juice, pruno
high – blazed, on the nod (heroin)
gambling – ass betting
You want some! – battle cry before a fight
Have it up! – warning by the lookout that a goon squad or search team of kangas is on their way
Fire on the line! – same as above
Floor wet! – same as above
Agua! – same as above
Roll up your window! – Stop eavesdropping on our conversation
Burn rubber! – Leave me alone!
Kick rocks! – same as above
Fall back! – same as above
Break it off! – Hand over your money!
FTS! – Fuck The System!
ACRONYMS USED BY THE UK POLICE
LOB – Load Of Bollocks when the copper does not believe what he is being told
RTFL – Read The Fucking Log is a warning to a copper to familiarize himself with what has been going on before coming on duty
MOP – Member Of the Public
IC3 – police identification code for a black person
FIDO – Fuck It Drive On. When police witness crime in progress but can’t be bothered to stop
ACB – All Coppers are Bastards probably not used by the police themselves
DID YOU KNOW …..
-The Clink was England’s most notorious prison and existed from 1144 – 1870. It is now a museum, situated in Southwark in London. It probably got it’s name from the sound made by the prisoners’ chains and ye olde gaoler’s large keys. Not a lot has changed since then.
– The Clink is also a charity. They have established gourmet restaurants inside real prisons for members of the public, where inmates can train for a career in catering for after they get released.
– ‘Stir’ for prison is a slang word that was current in Victorian London. There are two theories for its origin. One is that it was a variation on Start, the nickname given by convicts to Newark, another notorious London slammer. The other is that Victorian thieves stole the word from gypsies. In their Romani language, “sturipen” meant imprisoned.
Bit off topic, but gypsies often ended up in prison. They came originally from Northern India and travelled up to various parts of Europe when their country got invaded by Moors and Mongols a millennium ago. The majority are now found in central Europe, Turkey and Spain (that’s how flamenco originated). The Portuguese shipped a lot of them to Brazil. They were called gypsies because Europeans thought they came from Egypt on account of their dark skin. A few of their words have become everyday English, and here’s a sample – pal, chavie, cushy, drag (as in drag queen), cosh, togs, skip (large waste container), lollipop, and shiv (prison slang for an improvised knife).
Ever wondered why the police are called ‘coppers’? Many assume it was because of the copper metal badges worn by New York police but the word goes back much further than that. To ‘cop’ was an Anglo-Saxon verb meaning to arrest. A copper was the person making an arrest. It was such a derogatory word that a law was passed against using it. So Victorian London’s hoodlums started holding a small piece of the metal copper in the palm of one hand to flash at the ‘peelers’ to take the piss. Americans subsequently shortened the word to the humble ‘cop’.
– The term ekky for police is an interesting one. When they are following you in a car, the word “police” seen in the driver’s mirror comes out in reverse as ECILOP. So the word got shortened to ekky.
– A new guard is called a cowboy. Just like the example above, if you spell cowboy backwards it comes out as yobwoc, acronym for a “young obnoxious bastard we often con.”
– Every Brit over 45 will guess where the expression ‘do a bamber’ came from. Bamber Gascoigne was the quizmaster of the TV series University Challenge which ran from 1962 – 1987. Apparently it has been revived with Jeremy Paxman as quizmaster.
– The origin of nosh is Yiddish, which itself derives from a very old form of German. No prizes for guessing which language ‘chow’ comes from.
– Jack the Biscuit, used for a self-appointed prison tough guy, is derived from a real person. Jack “the Hat” McVitie, a London villain, was killed by the Kray brothers. The ‘Biscuit’ bit comes from the similarity of his surname with a well known snack food manufacturer.
– Diesel is well-known in the UK as prison tea. It is weak and sugarless and made in a huge copper boiler with one single netted teabag. It tastes like making love in a canoe. It’s as bitter as the tite-ass cheapskate who dropped a penny down a bottomless well.
– If there is one nationality that has been singled out for slurs in the English language, it’s the Dutch. Most English people believe we have never been invaded since 1066 but technically this is not true. The Dutch did in 1664 as a show of naval strength but never intended to stay. They captured Skegness in Lincolnshire and sailed all the way up the Thames and the Medway, burning the English fleet and towing away the flagship of King Charles 1. They were our most bitter enemies in the 17th and 18th centuries and many sea battles were won and lost against them. So we have double dutch, dutch courage, go dutch and “do the dutch”.
– We can be forgiven for thinking that “quack” for fake doctor came from Disney. The word has also been in use since the 17th century. It comes from the Dutch (or Afrikaan) word “kwakzalver”. Another word is “croaker”, more specifically a doctor who can be persuaded to prescribe narcotic substances. Croaker is also an Atlantic fish which makes croaking noises, like a doctor agreeing to give you benzos or opioids without saying much. The point in both cases is that prison doctors are rarely qualified medical practitioners. They are more likely to be a kanga who has taken a first-aid course.
– The common word screw has a sinister history. The treadmill, found these days in most gyms, was a device invented as a torture instrument for prisons in Victorian England. As prisoners were forced to run on it, corn was also milled or water pumped. A ‘turn-key’ was a gaoler who operated the machine, with a screw being turned to make the treadmill harder.
– A long prison sentence is known as Buck Rogers time. He was a science fiction comic strip character, first appearing in 1930, who travelled forward into the 25th century. The inference is that you will spend so long in prison that you’ll need to travel into the future to get out.
Why not test your ace boon coon? If you wanted to make it into a quiz, you could get them to match the slang with the definitions. Anything to pass the time.