Part 3
General usage. To jump or travel about from place to place.
HOOP, Noun
General currency, though used most frequently by “short-odds” grafters who practice merchandising by unlicensed solicitation. A finger ring. A “phony hoop” is a gold-plated ring. Grafters of mediocre intellectuality seek protection from apprehension for vagrancy by carrying a stock of “hoops,” “glims” and “supers,” or “blocks” (watches). Not to be confounded with the jovial exclamation, “Whoops! my dear,” of fairies and theatrical characters.
HOP MERCHANT, Noun
Current amongst drug habitues. A dispenser of opium and opiates. Usually applied to drug peddlers who have no established headquarters, but are itinerant.
HUCKS, Noun
Current amongst “sure-thing” grafters. The walnut shells used in the three shell game. See “HICKS”; “NUTS.” Example: “We’ll make the ball game on Sunday and play the hucks.”
HUMP, Noun
Current amongst prison habitues. The middle of a term; the half-way point in a prison sentence. Example: “How long have you got yet on your bit? I’m just over the hump.”
HUNCH, Noun
General usage. An inspiration; an intuition; an “office.”
HUNDRED PER CENT, Noun
Used by sure-thing admen, by confidence grafters who maintain the plausible appearance of giving value for moneys received, but who in reality give nothing. Fake advertising is the principal hundred per cent graft.
HUNKIE, Noun
Current in localities where North European laborers abound. A corruption of Hungarian, but employed to signify a Continental European who is unwashed and unnaturalized.
HUSTLER, Noun
General currency. A grafter; a pimp who steals betimes. The genteel thief is designated a “hustler.”
HYPER, Noun
Current amongst money-changers. A flim-flammer; a layer of currency, that is, one who makes a purchase and tenders a bank note and after receiving proper change pretends to discover the exact amount of change required to pay for the goods purchased and thereupon declares his preference for the bank note rather than for the change. In the exchange he strives to confuse the obliging changemaker for the purpose of obtaining an excess of his proper due. Or, the “hyper” requests a bank note for subsidiary coin and upon being accommodated ostentatiously seals the bank note in an addressed envelope. The merchant discovers that the subsidiary coin is less than the stated amount and demands his bank note, whereupon a substitute envelope is tendered by the “hyper” with a request that he hold it until the “hyper” returns to his home and secures the additional small change. There are other systems of the “hyper” in vogue, but the principle is the same in all.
IN DUTCH, Adverb
General usage. Mistaken; in trouble. See “JACKPOT.”
JAB, Noun
Current amongst morphine and cocaine fiends. A hypodermic injection.
JACKPOT, Noun
General currency. A dilemma; a difficult strait; a retribution; trouble; an arrest. See “JINX”; “IN DUTCH.” Example: “Where’s Joe? He pulled a raw-jaw stunt and made a jackpot.”
JAKE, Noun
General currency amongst cosmopolitan crooks. The state of knowing; familiarity with a secret or a scheme or meaning. See “HEP”; “JOE.” Example: “You’re making a boob out of yourself; he’s Jake to the whole works.” As an adjective “jake” means good; satisfactory; acceptable; all-right.
JAMB, Noun
Current chiefly amongst yeggs and prowlers. The state of being closed, as a store or house; locked up; inaccessible. See “Sloughed,” not in the sense of “sluffed” as the same word is sometimes used, though with the latter pronunciation while retaining the former spelling. Example: “The front’s in the jamb; try the rear.” Also used to signify trouble in the sense of “JACK POT.”
JANE, Noun
General currency. A woman, though not in any opprobrious sense; the sexual complement of the term “JOHN,” a man.
JERVE, Noun
Current amongst pickpockets. A vest pocket; the “tool”; the “wire”; the “claw” in a gun mob. Examples: “Go after the left jerve for a bundle of scratch.” “The jerve was nailed bang to rights coming through the tip.”
JESSIE, Noun
General currency. A bluff; a threat. Example: “He rang in a jessie and got away with it.”
JIG, Noun
General currency. An affair; a misfortune; a mistake. Example: “He used bad judgment and got into a jig.”
JIGGER, Noun
Current amongst yeggs and tramps. A fake wound, burn, scald, or other crippled condition. See “BUG”; “P. P.” Example: “They’re all jigger bums.”
JIGGER, Verb
Supra idem. An exclamation of warning; an injunction to cease; to mar; to spoil; to deface or derange. Examples: “Jigger! The bull’s coming.” “You’ve jiggered the lock.”
JIM, Noun
General currency. A cheap, inferior or worthless thing. Contraction of “JIM CROW.” See “CROW.”
JIM, Verb
General currency. A synonym for “JIGGER.” Example: “Lay off! You’ll jim the whole works.”
JIMMY, Noun
Used mainly by yeggs and prowlers. A burglar’s tool. A short, powerful chisel or lever used by thieves for prying doors and windows open.
JIMMY, Verb
Supra idem. To pry or wrench loose with any instrument.
JINKS, JINX, Noun
General usage. In difficult straits. See “IN DUTCH.”
JITNEY, Noun
General currency. A nickel; a dime; a small coin; a picayune. Used variously to signify an extremity in finance. Example: “Break away; he hasn’t got a jitney.”
JOE, Noun
General currency in polite criminal circles. Wise; sophisticated. See “Hep,” of which “JOE” and “JAKE” are subdivisions or contractions or substitutions.
JOHN, Noun
General currency amongst the demi-monde. A “captain”; a “sucker”; an amorous fool with money and free love proclivities. Also a man in a contemptuous sense. Examples: “She’s got a John keeping her.” “Ask this John what time the train starts.”
JOHN HANCOCK, Noun
Current amongst confidence men and paper grafters generally. A signature. Derived from the common observation that John Hancock, of Revolutionary fame, wrote a massive, extremely legible hand. See “FINGER PRINT.”
JOINT, Noun
General currency. A business establishment; a hangout. Sometimes used as a synonym of “DUMP,” though it does not necessarily imply meanness or disrepute. Example: “Let’s drop in this joint and buy a suit of clothes.”
JOLT, Noun
General usage. A prison sentence; a penalization; a blow; a physical or moral jar. Example: “He did a jolt once before in Joliet.”
JOHN O’BRIEN, Noun
Current generally. A freight train, used in contradistinction to a “RATTLER,” a passenger train. Example: “You can see by his clothes that he has been riding John O’s.” Amongst “yeggs” it signifies also a moneyless safe.
JUG, Noun
General currency. A prison; a bank; a secret receptacle for money or compact valuables. Example: “Tail this mark to the jug and case what he draws,” i. e., “observe what money he draws.”
JUNGLE, Noun
Current amongst yeggs. A loafing place or hang out beyond a city’s limits, whether in the woods or not. An isolated or little frequented spot.
JUNK, Noun
General currency. Inferior goods; any property of relative worthlessness. Example: “Everything in his keister is junk.”
KALE, Noun
General currency. Bank notes; money of any kind. Evolved from the term “GREEN GOODS,” the latter metaphor for money being derived from the greenish aspect of currency. Example: “He’s got a bundle of kale that would choke a cow.”
KEISTER, Noun
General currency. A satchel; a handbag; a small grip. Example: “What’s his grift? He prowls the depots for keisters.”
KICK, Noun
Some general currency, but employed most effectively by pickpockets. In common usage it signifies a pocket, any pocket; amongst “guns” it is used exclusively to signify a front pants pocket. Also a protest, a “squawk.”
KINK, Noun
General circulation. A crook; a larcenous criminal. See “HOOK”; “HUSTLER.” Example: “Are there any kinks in the joint?” Also used by yeggs to designate a non-criminal tramp, or one who is not initiated into the particular craft of the speaker. In this latter sense the term is derived from the epithet “gay-cat,” meaning a “working plug.” Example: “Cut him out; he’s got forty-seven kinks in his tail.”
KIP, Noun
General usage. A bed; a place to sleep. See “PAD”; “DOSS”; “FLOP.” Used also as a verb, to sleep, to go to bed, etc.
KISSER, Noun
General circulation. The countenance. See “MOOSH”; “MUG[9].” Example: “You’ll recognize him by his hatchet kisser.”
[9] There is no entry for “MUG” in the text.
KITTY HOP, Noun
Current chiefly amongst gamblers. A heads-I-win-tails-you-lose situation or proposition; a “double-cross”; a “frame-up,” in which “both ends may be played against the middle.” Also used to indicate a practical joke. Example: “We got the skirt to frame a kitty hop for him and he fell for it.”
LACE, Verb
General currency. To slam; to punch; to beat unmercifully. Example: “The three dicks laced him like a football and then squared it by throwing an order of ham and eggs under his belt.”
LAG, Noun
Current amongst statutory criminals. A prison sentence of one year; sometimes used to signify an indefinite term of years in prison. The “STRETCH” better expresses the latter sentence of penal servitude. Example: “He’s doing a lag in the little can.” Also used as a verb as the equivalent of “RAILROADING” a criminal to prison.
LAM, Noun
General currency. A hasty get-away; a running escape. Example: “He heeled to the door and made a lam.”
LAM, Verb
General usage. To run; to flee. Most frequently employed in the imperative mood.
LAMISTER, Noun
Supra idem. A corruption of “LAM.” Also a fugitive from justice. Example: “He’s a lamister out of Chicago.”
LAMOS, Adjective
General currency. Gold-plated; flimsy; unsubstantial. Derived from the name of a firm of Chicago jewelers who supplied the cheap jewelry trade with “PHONIES,” or fake jewelry. Example: “You can’t hock it for two-bits; it’s lamos.” Also used to signify inferior personal qualities.
LAYING OUT, Verb, Present Part.
Current amongst prowlers and sneak thieves. To watch from ambush; to spy upon a person or establishment. Example: “To get this dump right we’ll have to lay out on it every night for a week and make the doings.”
LAYING (NOTES), Verb, Present Part.
Current amongst flim-flammers. To make fraudulent change; to cheat by the ruse of substitution. The latter craft is denominated “LAYING THE ENVELOPE.”
LEATHER, Noun
Some general currency, but used chiefly by pickpockets. A pocketbook; a wallet; a billbook. See “POKE.” Example: “He has an inside leather.”
LEARY, Adjective
General usage. Afraid; anxious; anticipatory.
LEMON, Noun
Current chiefly amongst bunco men. A confidence game in which skill at pool is the bait, though its successful negotiation is based upon the dishonesty or avarice of the victim. See “WIRE”; “SPUD.” A lemon joint is a crooked pool and billiard room. Lately evolved to comprehend the general meaning of a disappointment, a commercial illusion. In this regard “lemon” is used In the deprecating sense conveyed by the term “gold mine.” Example: “Lemons are selling in the open market for thirty cents a dozen, but this one cost me a hundred iron men.”
LIVE ONE, Noun
General currency. An informed individual; a prospectively profitable victim; an ambitious or keenly alert person. Example: “If we put this live one through the sprouts we throw our feet under the mahogany at the big top all the rest of the winter.”
LOB, Noun
General currency amongst better informed crooks. An awkward craftsman; a delinquent; an opprobrious character amongst thieves. Contracted from “LOBSTER,” which in turn is a metaphor derived by suggestion from “CRAB,” the latter symbolizing backward action or the propensity for reluctant participation. “LOBBY GOW” is another form of the same term, used principally by confidence and “flat-joint” grafters to signify a minor confederate, or “booster.”
LOADING, Verb, Present Part.
Current amongst pickpockets. The act of following, escorting or forcibly jamming passengers aboard a street or passenger car or up any flight of steps, as the entrance to an elevated railroad station; the purpose of “LOADING” is to take advantage of unsuspecting eagerness on the part of passengers so that violent extraction of valuables from pockets shall scarcely be heeded. Example: “We were loading ’em on for two hours steady in the Sunday excursion pushes.”
LOCO, Adverb
Current chiefly in western circles, though not used exclusively by criminals. Slightly erratic in mental processes. The Spanish value of the term is “crazy,” but by American criminal adoption it has been modified to comprehend just less than that. See “NUTS.”
LOSER, Noun
Current amongst prison habitues. An ex-convict. See “Con.” Examples: “Three time losers cop life in some states.”
LUMP, Noun
Current chiefly amongst yeggs, hobos and the indigent. A donation of victuals intended for consumption outside the house. But alas! lumps are sometimes impaled on the fence pickets by fastidious beggars who become offended at the failure of well meaning but non-intuitive philanthropists to invite them in to eat at the table. This latter operation is gratefully termed a “sit-down.”
MAC, Noun
General currency. A pimp; a lover of a lewd woman. A man who lives upon the earnings of a prostitute. Derived from the French term “Macquereau.”
MAIN STEM, Noun
General currency. The main thoroughfare of a community. See “DRAG.”
MAKE, Verb
General currency. To recognize; to discern; to solve; to acquire in an intellectual sense. See “RAP.” Example: “You had better ring up (disguise) so he won’t make you.”
MARK, Noun
General circulation. A man; a prospective victim.
MATCH, Noun
Current amongst confidence men. A bunco game similar in nature to the “LEMON,” but in which coins are matched; the fraud consisting in treachery on the part of the confidence man who steers the victim with the professed intention of betraying his de facto confederate.
MEAL TICKET, Noun
General currency. A female of the open market who supports a lover; any gratuitous source of subsistence. Example: “The stiff won’t put up his back so long as he’s got a meal ticket.”
MEIG, Noun
General currency amongst cosmopolitans. A nickel; a five-cent piece. See “JITNEY.” Sometimes used to indicate the minimum basis of exchange medium, the cent, as a hundred meigs, fifty meigs, etc. Example: “What’s the tax for the scoffin’s? Twenty-five meigs.”
MELT, Noun
Current amongst loothunters, but pennyweighters and other jewelry thieves particularly. Precious metals that may be melted in a crucible to make identity difficult or impossible. See “BREAK UP.” Example: “The swag netted a melt of a thousand dollars.”
M’GIMP, MEGIMP, Noun
Current in western circles. A pimp; a lover in the vicious meaning. See “MAC.”
MICHAEL, Noun
Current amongst bottle drinkers. A flask of liquor. Example: “Have you got a michael on your hip?”
MICHIGAN, Noun
General currency. A spectacular ruse; a deceptive appearance, as a fake bank roll; a hoax staged with sinister intent. Example: “They started a michigan scrap and trimmed the sucker in the mix-up.”
MICKY, Noun
Current amongst bottle drinkers. A corruption of “MICHAEL.”
MILL, Verb
General currency, but of western origin. To amble around aimlessly; to exercise by walking. Example: “We milled around town all day without turning a trick.”
MITT, Noun
Current chiefly amongst gamblers when the sense is a hand of cards. The “MITT” is a confidence game of the same nature as the “LEMON” or the “MATCH,” involving a double cross. Also a card hand in any square game. In general currency it means both the human hand and any scheme, system or personal character. See “DUKE.” Amongst prison habitues the “MITTS” signify handcuffs. Example: “If he spiels long enough he’ll tip his mitt.” “They framed a strong mitt for him and beat him for half a century.” A “MITT JOINT” is a gambling house where victims are “steered” for fleecing by means of deceptively “sure thing” hands.
MOB, Noun
General currency. Two or more confederates joined together for nefarious practices. Used most frequently to designate a gang of pickpockets, a “GUN MOB.”
MOCHA, Noun
Current amongst shoplifters. Cloth; a suit pattern. Example: “I know a derrick who’ll peddle a mocha for a finif.”
MOLL, Noun
General currency. A woman, regardless of character. See “JANE.”
MONACRE, MONACKER, Noun
Current amongst yeggs and registering itinerants. A nickname; a professional cognomen. A corruption of the term “monogram,” devised to meet the contingencies arising out of the oft requested information: “What’s your handle?” Example: “You’ll have to look in the cook book to find a fancy monacker, for all the ready ones are appropriated, judging by the register on this tank.”
MONKEY, Noun
General currency. A man, used in the mildly indifferent sense of a stranger. See “GEEZER,” “GAZABO,” etc. Sometimes used to signify a “BOOB.”
MOOCH, Noun
Current amongst beggars. A mendicant; an alms solicitor.
MOOCH, Verb
General currency. To stroll; to move about. See “MILL.” Example: “Mooch around the block and come back in ten minutes.” Also, to beg.
MOOSH, MOUSH, Noun
General circulation. The human face; the physiog. See “KISSER.” Also the mouth. Probably from French bouche (mouth). Probably derived from the French “mouchoir,” a handkerchief, suggested by its utilization as a face mop. Example: “He’s got a harp moosh,” i. e., Irish.
M, or MORPH, Noun
Used by morphine fiends. Sulphate of morphia.
MOPE, Verb
General currency. To walk away; to remove one’s presence to another locality or spot. See “BLOW,” “MOOCH,” “DUCK.”
MOUSER, Noun
Current in cosmopolitan circles. A “fairy;” a character obsessed by lewd passions.
MOUTHPIECE, Noun
General currency. A lawyer; an advocate; a spokesman; a representative. Example: “The fall dough is to be used exclusively for a mouthpiece and nothing else.”
MUD FENCE, Noun
Current amongst yeggs, safecrackers. A soap lip, a trench of soap or other plastic substance constructed to hold nitroglycerin in funnel formation until it seeps through a joint in a safe.
MUSH, Noun
General usage. An umbrella. Example: “When you can’t do anything else you can heel the hotels and depots for mushes and turkeys.”
NAILED, Verb, Past Part.
General currency. Apprehended. See “GRABBED,” “GLOMMED.”
NECKING, Noun
General circulation. A scrutiny; an impertinent staring. See “GANDER,” “RUBBER[10].” Example: “The guinea on the end is giving you a necking through the glass.” Also used as a verb, to “neck,” to peer, to watch.
[10] There is no entry for “RUBBER” in the text.
NEXT, Adverb
General usage. Conventionally wise. A synonym for “JAKE,” “JOE,” “HEP.” Example: “You can’t spring anything he isn’t next to.”
NICK, Verb
Current mainly amongst pickpockets. To surreptitiously extract something from the person; to “touch” in the criminal sense; to purloin by stealth in personal presence of a victim. Example: “This lob couldn’t nick a handful of air out of a flour barrel without scratching his mitt.”
NINES, Noun
Current amongst roues and cosmopolitans. The limit possible; the maximum extent. Example: “He’s soused to the nines;” “That dony is made up to the nines,” i. e., artificially beautified.
NOODLE, Noun
General currency. The human head; brains; savoir faire; mentality. Example: “He’s got a noodle like a Santa Claus,” i. e., intuition, perspicacity.
NUT, Noun
Commonly current in all circles when the meaning is “LOCO.” Used by grafters whose operations involve an investment to signify an expense incurred in connection with a venture. Example: “The grift was punk; we were framed five strong and never got the nut off.” “We went on the nut for two fifty.”
NUTS, Noun
Current amongst “flat joint” grafters, though comprehended in general. The three shells. See “HICKS.” Example: “If we can’t beat the crap game we will play the nuts for the winners.” As an adjective and adverb it signifies daft, mentally deranged.
OFFICE, Noun
General currency. A signal; a sign; a warning conveyed by facial expression, by physical motion, by sound or other nonchalant prompting. Example: “When I give you the office, blow.” Used also as a verb in the same sense.
ON, Adverb
General currency. Wise. A synonym for “NEXT,” “JAKE.” Also used to indicate an acceptance, as of a proposition. Example: “You’re on for five hundred.”
OPEN AIR, Noun
Current amongst “flat joint” men and circus grafters generally. Used both as adjective and noun. County fair, street carnival, popular sport gathering and other out-of-door grafting.
OVER ISSUE, Noun
Current amongst confidence men of the “green goods” type. A bunco scheme involving the use of crisp, new legitimate bank notes which are purported to have been clandestinely issued by employees of the Bureau of Engraving and Printing. One or two of the notes are given the victim who is then steered to a confederate who poses as a detective. The latter professes to recognize the principal in the bunco as an ex-convict and counterfeiter. The upshot of the scheme is the “shaking down” of the victim for all he possesses and is successfully carried out through the victim’s fear induced by consciousness of criminal complicity.
PAD, Noun
General circulation. A bed; a place to sleep. See “KIP;” “DOSS.”
PADDED, Verb, Past Part.
Current amongst shoplifters. To have swag concealed about the person in a neat, compact order so as to enable the thief to pass inspection. Example: “He moped out of the joint padded to the nines.”
PAN, Verb
General currency. To scandalize; to defame. Example: “They panned everybody to a whisper.” “ON THE PAN” signifies a subject on the carpet for discussion.
PAPER HANGER, Noun
Current principally amongst forgers and utterers of false paper. Example: “There’s a bunch of paper hangers plastering the town from A to Izzard.”
PETE, PETER, Noun
Current amongst yeggs. A safe; a strong box; a “GOPHER.” Example: “The pete in the pig is a single H. H. with a drop,” i. e., “The safe in the hardware store is a single door, Herring-Hall with a drop handle.” Amongst gamblers and badgers a “peter” is a sleeping potion, a “knockout,” such as hydrate of chloral.
PIG, Noun
Current amongst yeggs and prowlers. A hardware store; the merchandise sold by hardware stores, preferably the more valuable assortments. Deduced: “Hardware”: steel tools, steel, iron, pig iron. Example: “He’s gone out to drop a swag of pig.”
PINCH, Noun
Current amongst “flat joint” grafters. A wheel of fortune or a roulette wheel that can be stopped at any point desired by operating a secret trigger or spring. As a noun its use is also general in the sense of an arrest; the same with the verb, to pinch.
PIPE, Noun
General currency. A certainty; a cinch. Example: “It’s a pipe that he can’t get away with it.” Derived from the term “lead pipe,” used by highwaymen, because its effectual employment involves a moral certainty that the robber will relieve the victim of his valuables.
PIPE, Verb
General currency. To look; to concentrate the attention; to observe. See “GUN.” Example: “Pipe the moll with the rocks.”
PITCH, Noun
General currency. An effort; an essay; an attempt. See “PLUNGE.” A “HIGH PITCH” is the term used by street fakirs to describe the operation of beguiling the public from a soap box, a platform, a carriage or automobile; selling merchandise from an eminence like an auctioneer.
PIVOT, Verb
Current amongst yeggs and street beggars. To solicit alms on the thoroughfares. Used also by “HUSTLERS” to indicate the operations of a woman of the town who solicits on the streets.
PLUNGE, Noun
Super idem. To sally out on the streets with a specific aim, as in begging, soliciting or in other reprehensible conduct. Example: “The whole tribe made a five buck plunge to spring Jimmy from the canister.” Amongst non-criminal classes of the demi-monde the term is used to indicate a strenuous endeavor.
POKE, Noun
General currency. A pocketbook. (Poke a sack or bag. “A pig in a poke.”) See “LEATHER.”
P. P., Noun
Current amongst yeggs and money-begging tramps. A plaster of paris cast used on arm or limb to simulate fracture. See “BUG;” “JIGGER.”
PRATT, Noun
General usage. The human rear; the buttocks; a hip pocket.
PROP, Noun
General circulation amongst pickpockets and looters. A diamond stud originally, now comprehending diamonds in any sense. See “FISH EYE.” Example: “Any heel gun can get a breech poke, but it takes an A1 claw to grab a prop.”
PROWL, Noun
General currency. An expeditionary investigation; a survey in transit; a search of the person or of a place in the sense of “FRISK;” a burglary; a sneak; a saunter. Also used as a verb in the same senses.
PUFF, Noun