spoon
Synonymous with SPOONEY. A SPOON has been defined to be "a thing that touches a lady’s lips without kissing them."
English · UK & Ireland 2057
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Expressions you’ll hear in Britain and Ireland — distinctly British usage first, then widespread staples.
spooney
(WHIP) Thin, haggard, like the shank of a spoon; also delicate, craving for something, longing for sweets. Avaricious. That tit is damned spooney. She's a spooney piece of goods. He's a spooney old fellow.
spooney
A weak-minded and foolish person, effeminate or fond; "to be SPOONEY on a girl," to be foolishly attached to one.
spoons
The condition of two persons who SPOON on each other, who are deeply in love. "I see, it’s a case of SPOONS with them," is a common phrase when lovers are mentioned.
sport
To exhibit, to wear, &c.,—a word which is made to do duty in a variety of senses, especially at the Universities.—See the Gradus ad Cantabrigiam. "To SPORT a new tile;" "to SPORT an Ægrotat" (i.e., a permission from the Dons to abstain from lectures, &c., on account of illness); "to SPORT one’s oak," to shut the outer door and exclude the public,—especially duns and boring acquaintances. Common also in the Inns of Court. See Notes and Queries, 2nd series, vol. viii. p.
spot
To mark, to recognise. Originally an Americanism, but now general. "I SPOTTED him (or it) at once."
spotted
To be known or marked by the police.
spout
"up the SPOUT," at the pawnbroker’s; SPOUTING, pawning. See POP for origin.
spouting
Theatrical declamation.
spouting club
A meeting of apprentices and mechanics to rehearse different characters in plays: thus forming recruits for the strolling companies.
spread
Butter. Term with workmen and schoolboys. See SCRAPE.
spread eagle
A soldier tied to the halberts in order to be whipped; his attitude bearing some likeness to that figure, as painted on signs.
spree
A frolic. Fun. A drinking bout. A party of pleasure.
spree
A boisterous piece of merriment; "going on the SPREE," starting out with intent to have a frolic. French, ESPRIT. In the Dutch language, SPREEUW is a jester.
spring-ankle warehouse
Newgate, or any other gaol: IRISH.
springer-up
A tailor who sells low-priced ready-made clothing, and gives starvation wages to the poor men and women who "make up" for him. The clothes are said to be SPRUNG-UP, or "blown together."
sprint race
A short-distance race, ran at the topmost speed throughout. SPRINT is in the North synonymous with SPURT, and hence the name.
sprung
Inebriated sufficiently to become boisterous.
spry
Active, strong, manly. Much used in America, but originally English.
spuddy
A seller of bad potatoes. In lower life, a SPUD is a raw potato; and roasted SPUDS are those cooked in the cinders with their skins on.
spun
When a man has failed in his examination at Woolwich, he is said to be SPUN; as at the Universities he is said to be "plucked" or "ploughed."
spunge
A thirsty fellow, a great drinker. To spunge; to eat and drink at another's cost. Spunging-house: a bailiff's lock-up-house, or repository, to which persons arrested are taken, till they find bail, or have spent all their money: a house where every species of fraud and extortion is practised under the protection of the law.
spunge
A mean, paltry fellow, sometimes called a SPUNGER.
spunging-house
The sheriff’s officer’s house, where prisoners, when arrested for debt, used to be taken. As extortionate charges were made there for accommodation, the name was far from inappropriate.
spunk
Rotten touchwood, or a kind of fungus prepared for tinder; figuratively, spirit, courage.
spunk
Spirit, fire, courage, mettle, good humour.
spunk-fencer
A lucifer-match seller.
spunks
Lucifer-matches.—Herefordshire; Scotland. SPUNK, says Urry, in his MS. notes to Ray, "is the excrescency of some tree, of which they make a sort of tinder to light their pipes with."
squab
A fat man or woman: from their likeness to a well-stuffed couch, called also a squab. A new-hatched chicken.
squabby
Flat, short and thick. From SQUAB, a sofa.
square
Honest, not roguish. A square cove, i.e. a man who does not steal, or get his living by dishonest means.
square
Honest; "on the SQUARE," i.e., fair and strictly honest; "to turn SQUARE," to reform, and get one’s living in an honest manner,—the opposite of "cross." The expression is, in all probability, derived from the well-known masonic emblem the SQUARE, the symbol of evenness and rectitude.
square cove
An honest man, as distinguished from "cross cove."
square moll
An honest woman, one who does not "batter."
square toes
An old man: square toed shoes were anciently worn in common, and long retained by old men.
squaring his nibs
Giving a policeman, or any official, money for an immoral or unlawful purpose. The term HIS NIBS has no reference to any functionary, as the words mean simply "him," and may be applied to any one.
squarum
A cobbler’s lapstone.
squash
To crush; "to go SQUASH," to collapse.
squeak
A narrow escape, a chance: he had a squeak for his life. To squeak; to confess, peach, or turn stag. They squeak beef upon us; they cry out thieves after us. CANT.
squeak
An escape. Generally used with regard to the avoidance of casualties. Among thieves, too, a prisoner acquitted after a hard trial is said to have had "a narrow SQUEAK for it."
squeak on a person
To inform against, to peach.
squeaker
A bar-boy; also a bastard or any other child. To stifle the squeaker; to murder a bastard, or throw It into the necessary house.--Organ pipes are likewise called squeakers. The squeakers are meltable; the small pipes are silver. CANT.
squeal
To inform, to peach. A North country variation of squeak; SQUEALER, an informer, also an illegitimate baby.
squeeze
Silk; also, by a very significant figure, a thief’s term for the neck.
squeeze crab
A sour-looking, shrivelled, diminutive fellow.
squeeze wax
A good-natured foolish fellow, ready to become security for another, under hand and seal.
squelch
A fall. Formerly a bailiff caught in a barrack-yard in Ireland, was liable by custom to have three tosses in a blanket, and a squelch; the squelch was given by letting go the corners of the blanket, and suffering him to fall to the ground. Squelch-gutted; fat, having a prominent belly.
squib
A small satirical or political temporary jeu d'esprit, which, like the firework of that denomination, sparkles, bounces, stinks, and vanishes.
squib
A jeu d’esprit, which, like the firework of that denomination, sparkles, bounces, stinks, and vanishes.—Grose. Generally used in reference to political and electioneering attacks of a smart kind, which sting for a moment and are then forgotten.
squiffy
Slightly inebriated.
squinny-eyed
Said of one given to squinting.—Shakspeare.
squint-a-pipes
A squinting man or woman; said to be born in the middle of the week, and looking both ways for Sunday; or born in a hackney coach, and looking out of both windows; fit for a cook, one eye in the pot, and the other up the chimney; looking nine ways at once.
squire of alsatia
A weak profligate spendthrift, the squire of the company; one who pays the whole reckoning, or treats the company, called standing squire.
squirrel
A prostitute: because she like that animal, covers her back with her tail. Meretrix corpore corpus alit. Menagiana, ii. 128.
squirt
A doctor, or chemist.
squish
Common term among University men for marmalade.
st. martin’s lace
Imitation gold lace; stage tinsel.
stab
"STAB yourself and pass the dagger," help yourself and pass the bottle.—Theatrical Slang.
stab-rag
A regimental tailor.—Military Slang.
stag
To turn stag; to impeach one's confederates: from a herd of deer, who are said to turn their horns against any of their number who is hunted.