grey-back
n.— «This wasn’t some callow youth adjusting to the exigencies of cruel Fate that saw a father die before his time and mother grappling, appropriately or inappropriately, with that loss; he was an adult—“grey-back,” in our Jamaican parlance—capable of, at this point of his development, understanding how the world worked, how women worked.» —“New year. Same dumb old stereotypes” by Sharon Leach Jamaica Observer (Kingston) Jan. 15, 2006. (source: Double-Tongued Dictionary)
Further reading
What if, instead of being an inanimate object, a dictionary were alive? That’s the idea behind a lavishly illustrated new children’s book called The Dictionary Story (Bookshop|Amazon) by Oliver Jeffers and Sam Winston. This is part of a...
Aubrey in Waco, Texas, says her mother used to warn the kids against contracting honkus of the bonkus, a fanciful name for a contagious disease. This colloquial term probably comes from the words bonk and konk, meaning “to hit” or...