In this week’s round of Slang This!, a member of the National Puzzlers League tries to separate the real slang terms from the fake ones. For example, which of following expressions is British rhyming slang for “wife”: boiler house or the stitches...
Martha is stumped by a riddle sent in by a listener. See if you can solve it. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Prisioner Riddle” Grant, we got an email from a guy named Robert who lives in Eurifereburg of Brooklyn. Mm— And he wrote...
cellblock n.— «Pulled off the streets, stripped of guns and badges, kept inside four walls and away—as much as possible—from the public, officers who are put on desk duty because their conduct is under investigation find themselves far from the...
keister v.— «The inmates know officials are looking for the phones and are going to great lengths to hide them, he said. It’s tough, officials admit, because some of the phones are small enough to be, in prison parlance, “keistered.”» —“McNeil...
mack n.— «Mr. Levine and his client were prisoners in California’s Lompoc Federal Correctional Complex. Like other federal inmates around the country, they found a can of mackerel—the “mack” in prison lingo—was the standard currency.» —“Mackerel...
million-dollar block n.— «He said in the United States they’ve coined a phrase “million-dollar blocks,” clusters of apartments or houses where a million dollars each year is spent sending some people who live there to prison.» —“Lock ’em up? Must...