If you watch British police procedurals, you’ll likely come across the term to grass someone, meaning “to inform on someone” or “to rat someone out.” It’s a bit of British rhyming slang that originated with the 19th-century phrase to shop on someone. That gave us the noun shopper, which became grasshopper, and then got shortened to grass. This is part of a complete episode.
Transcript of “British Slang to Grass Someone”
Hi, you have A Way with Words.
Hi, this is Jill Wippincott calling from Miami.
Hey, Jill, welcome.
Hi, Jill, welcome to the show.
Thank you.
What’s up?
Well, so I’m a big watcher of the British police procedural shows on my PBS stations.
I like to watch Vera, I like to watch Smith & Bailey, and they use a term on them when they are interrogating a suspect, and it’s “grassing,” or “to grass” somebody, as in to inform on someone or to tattle on someone. In the United States we would say we would rat someone out or rat on someone, and I was just wondering where that comes from.
To grass someone. To grass. Yeah, I remember reading this for the first time in a prison narrative, like a first-person story about somebody’s time in prison. It was a great story.
I have no idea. It’s interesting.
It goes back to rhyming slang. In old British slang, “to shop” someone would mean to inform on them. You’re basically shopping information about a person. I know that they’ve gone out robbing houses in the night and you trade that with somebody else for favors or to get out of your own conviction, that sort of thing. You’re shopping on them.
The rhyming slang for “to shop” is “grasshopper,” so if you’re a shopper, you turn into a grasshopper, a shopper, someone who informs, you become a grasshopper.
And then “grasshopper” as rhyming slang was shortened to “grass” as a noun and “verbed” as well.
So now if you grass, you inform on someone.
So the meaning changed even though the form of the word transformed over time.
And “grass” goes back, oh, 1920s probably, maybe even a little bit older than that, and shop someone dates back, oh, 1800s at least.
So you’re talking about, like, the Cockney rhyming from the East End of London.
It may not be Cockney rhyming, you know, it’s often thought by people in the Americas that all rhyming slang is Cockney and it isn’t. There’s tons of rhyming slang that has nothing to do with Cockney. So it could just be standard British rhyming slang.
Well, very interesting. Thank you very much. Yeah, sure.
Thanks for calling.
Really appreciate it.
Thanks for calling.
Take care, Joe.
My pleasure.
Bye-bye.
Bye.
Yeah, I really like that.
So grasshopper was used as a noun?
So if you shop someone, you inform on them.
Yeah.
And you are a grasshopper?
If you are someone who shops, then you’re a shopper.
The rhyming slang for that is grasshopper.
Grasshopper is sort of to grass as a noun, which then becomes a verb to grass.
That is so cool.
And we don’t use it on this side of the ocean.
No, definitely.
That’s a very clear divide there.
No American would use that unless they were being pretentious.
Great.
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