A Glossary for the Nineties: Chapter 3 - Crime and punishment
[Taken from A Glossary for the Nineties, by David Rowan (Prion Books, 1998), based on the column of that name in The Guardian's Weekend magazine through most of the 1990s. © David Rowan]
CHAPTER 3: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
The slang of cops and robbers
AFFIRMATIVE SHOPPING n. sl. Looting - at least, that's the phrase they've been using on the streets of The Country Formerly Known As Zaire. It seems the military, in particular, were so fond of removing goods not entirely their own that the cynics felt the need to coin a phrase.
BANANA n. British street slang for a corrupt police officer, initially used to refer to the Special Patrol Group. You could always spot them, according to the word on the street, because they were yellow, bent, and hanging around in bunches.
BOLIVIAN MARCHING POWDER n. sl. Cocaine - as popularised by Jay McInerney in his book Bright Lights, Big City.
CAR BRA n. sl. A black plastic cover that you fit around the front of your car to absorb the radar signals emitted from all those roadside speed traps. Apparently, the device can confuse the machine when it's attempting to read your no doubt excessive speed, so no more of those irritating speeding tickets through the post. Also known as a stealth bra.
CARJACK v. To order a car driver out at gunpoint, then get behind the wheel and drive off yourself. A craze, and word, which came out of Detroit and found its way across Europe. In New York, police have warned drivers to drive on if another car as much as touches theirs: it could be just another carjacker seeking a long-term test drive.
CLONE v. To fix a stolen mobile phone so that it appears to belong to a paying subscriber. It works by a process called "rechipping". And with 15,000 phones stolen throughout the UK every month, someone isn't going to like their bill.
COMPUTER INJURY n. A new legal offence being talked of as the big crime of the year 2000: it is what happens to your computer when it is damaged by another computer that has failed to prepare for the millennium time-bomb. If you fail to re-set your computer's internal clock, and your computer talks to another, it could cause it untold harm. And you will be legally liable.
DIBBLE n. sl. A brush with the officers of Her Majesty's law-enforcement agency. Think of Officer Dibble, the policeman who invariably pursued Top Cat in those historic cartoons. The term has been identified by Newsweek as part of the hip new "BritSpeak" now being spoken in fashionable haunts across London, allegedly the world's trendiest city.
DROWNING n. A modern form of crime popular among those who don't like working too hard: it is the art of gaining entry to a property by claiming to work for the water company. Look in any local paper to see how far it has spread.
GARAGE ACTION n. sl. What police officers call the legal actions that - at least until Stoke Newington police unexpectedly lost a case against The Guardian - have brought them a steady stream of libel damages from newspapers. Why? Because the sums involved can often pay for a new garage at home.
GREEN-COLLAR FRAUD n. A new type of deception, it's the use of bogus environmental claims to sell merchandise. In New York, for instance, a former state attorney sought to ban the words "biodegradable", "degradable" or "photodegradable" in advertising for any plastic product, because plastic does not decompose in landfills. It's all part of the greenlash (qv).
KEGNAP v. To steal beer kegs and melt them down for their aluminium value. Brewers say kegnapping is costing them £10 million a year: in one recent raid police found more than 3,000.
MAFIOSKI n. Where the Godfather and Dr Zhivago meet. The Russian mafia is now well established in Britain, according to the crime authorities, murdering, extorting and stealing. Can police stop them? No - but at least they've lost no time in agreeing on a name for them.
MARKETING FLEXIBILITY PAYMENT n. euph. A bribe. At least, that seems the best way to describe the $1,500 the Baltimore Sun offered its unionised employees as a "one-time marketing flexibility payment" to sign a contract by a specific date.
NARCOTERRORIST n. The fashionable career criminal for the nineties: requirements include large quantities of Class A drugs, automatic weapons, and some well-placed South American business partners. President George Bush did more than anyone to popularise the job.
SCREAM n. What frequently follows a criminal conviction in a court of law. It's not the sentenced person's emotional reaction, but prison slang for an appeal. In the meantime, the convict might have to serve a weekend or a haircut (a very short spell in prison, also known as a shit and a shave), a tramp's lagging (a 90-day sentence), a calendar or a stretch (a year), or perhaps a pontoon (21 months). Which allows all that extra time to go about creating colourful slang terms for every aspect of criminal life.
GO ON TOUR WITH THE NATIONAL v. sl. Prison slang for the practise of being moved around the country's prison system.
SHOULDER SURF v. To use a pair of binoculars to read the charge-card numbers of people using payphones. A popular current fraud that is bemusing the telephone industry, and by far the most linguistically creative crime of the moment.
TOUCH THE DOG'S ARSE v. No, vicar, nothing to do with bestial pleasures - this is current prison slang for the crime of Taking and Driving Away a vehicle. It's a much more colourful alternative to the simple TDA, which is how police officers in southern England refer to the theft of a car. That description is confusing to police in London, where such offences are known as TAWOCs (taking away without owner's consent), and among Geordies, where they are TWOCs (taking without owner's consent). None of this mattered until the Channel Tunnel meant a new Franglais had to be developed so that Anglo-French tunnel cops could understand each other. Now, imagine the confusion when, for instance, Thames Valley police refer to drunks in charge of cars as DICs: what will Jean-Claude think when his walkie-talkie warns him that DICs have been seen coming up the ring-road?
WHITE-POWDER BAR n. Lawyers experienced in drugs cases who are called upon to defend alleged dealers. Came to prominence at the start of the decade, when General Noriega of Panama sought help from Miami's white-powder bar to release his chilled assets. That, in the lawyers' slang, meant assets that had not quite been frozen.
CHAPTER 3: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT
The slang of cops and robbers
AFFIRMATIVE SHOPPING n. sl. Looting - at least, that's the phrase they've been using on the streets of The Country Formerly Known As Zaire. It seems the military, in particular, were so fond of removing goods not entirely their own that the cynics felt the need to coin a phrase.
BANANA n. British street slang for a corrupt police officer, initially used to refer to the Special Patrol Group. You could always spot them, according to the word on the street, because they were yellow, bent, and hanging around in bunches.
BOLIVIAN MARCHING POWDER n. sl. Cocaine - as popularised by Jay McInerney in his book Bright Lights, Big City.
CAR BRA n. sl. A black plastic cover that you fit around the front of your car to absorb the radar signals emitted from all those roadside speed traps. Apparently, the device can confuse the machine when it's attempting to read your no doubt excessive speed, so no more of those irritating speeding tickets through the post. Also known as a stealth bra.
CARJACK v. To order a car driver out at gunpoint, then get behind the wheel and drive off yourself. A craze, and word, which came out of Detroit and found its way across Europe. In New York, police have warned drivers to drive on if another car as much as touches theirs: it could be just another carjacker seeking a long-term test drive.
CLONE v. To fix a stolen mobile phone so that it appears to belong to a paying subscriber. It works by a process called "rechipping". And with 15,000 phones stolen throughout the UK every month, someone isn't going to like their bill.
COMPUTER INJURY n. A new legal offence being talked of as the big crime of the year 2000: it is what happens to your computer when it is damaged by another computer that has failed to prepare for the millennium time-bomb. If you fail to re-set your computer's internal clock, and your computer talks to another, it could cause it untold harm. And you will be legally liable.
DIBBLE n. sl. A brush with the officers of Her Majesty's law-enforcement agency. Think of Officer Dibble, the policeman who invariably pursued Top Cat in those historic cartoons. The term has been identified by Newsweek as part of the hip new "BritSpeak" now being spoken in fashionable haunts across London, allegedly the world's trendiest city.
DROWNING n. A modern form of crime popular among those who don't like working too hard: it is the art of gaining entry to a property by claiming to work for the water company. Look in any local paper to see how far it has spread.
GARAGE ACTION n. sl. What police officers call the legal actions that - at least until Stoke Newington police unexpectedly lost a case against The Guardian - have brought them a steady stream of libel damages from newspapers. Why? Because the sums involved can often pay for a new garage at home.
GREEN-COLLAR FRAUD n. A new type of deception, it's the use of bogus environmental claims to sell merchandise. In New York, for instance, a former state attorney sought to ban the words "biodegradable", "degradable" or "photodegradable" in advertising for any plastic product, because plastic does not decompose in landfills. It's all part of the greenlash (qv).
KEGNAP v. To steal beer kegs and melt them down for their aluminium value. Brewers say kegnapping is costing them £10 million a year: in one recent raid police found more than 3,000.
MAFIOSKI n. Where the Godfather and Dr Zhivago meet. The Russian mafia is now well established in Britain, according to the crime authorities, murdering, extorting and stealing. Can police stop them? No - but at least they've lost no time in agreeing on a name for them.
MARKETING FLEXIBILITY PAYMENT n. euph. A bribe. At least, that seems the best way to describe the $1,500 the Baltimore Sun offered its unionised employees as a "one-time marketing flexibility payment" to sign a contract by a specific date.
NARCOTERRORIST n. The fashionable career criminal for the nineties: requirements include large quantities of Class A drugs, automatic weapons, and some well-placed South American business partners. President George Bush did more than anyone to popularise the job.
SCREAM n. What frequently follows a criminal conviction in a court of law. It's not the sentenced person's emotional reaction, but prison slang for an appeal. In the meantime, the convict might have to serve a weekend or a haircut (a very short spell in prison, also known as a shit and a shave), a tramp's lagging (a 90-day sentence), a calendar or a stretch (a year), or perhaps a pontoon (21 months). Which allows all that extra time to go about creating colourful slang terms for every aspect of criminal life.
GO ON TOUR WITH THE NATIONAL v. sl. Prison slang for the practise of being moved around the country's prison system.
SHOULDER SURF v. To use a pair of binoculars to read the charge-card numbers of people using payphones. A popular current fraud that is bemusing the telephone industry, and by far the most linguistically creative crime of the moment.
TOUCH THE DOG'S ARSE v. No, vicar, nothing to do with bestial pleasures - this is current prison slang for the crime of Taking and Driving Away a vehicle. It's a much more colourful alternative to the simple TDA, which is how police officers in southern England refer to the theft of a car. That description is confusing to police in London, where such offences are known as TAWOCs (taking away without owner's consent), and among Geordies, where they are TWOCs (taking without owner's consent). None of this mattered until the Channel Tunnel meant a new Franglais had to be developed so that Anglo-French tunnel cops could understand each other. Now, imagine the confusion when, for instance, Thames Valley police refer to drunks in charge of cars as DICs: what will Jean-Claude think when his walkie-talkie warns him that DICs have been seen coming up the ring-road?
WHITE-POWDER BAR n. Lawyers experienced in drugs cases who are called upon to defend alleged dealers. Came to prominence at the start of the decade, when General Noriega of Panama sought help from Miami's white-powder bar to release his chilled assets. That, in the lawyers' slang, meant assets that had not quite been frozen.
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