Let’s Go Twocking and Joyriding

In Britain, the word twoc means “car theft,” and to go twocking means “to go joyriding in a stolen car.” It’s police slang derived from the acronym for the phrase Taking Without Owner’s Consent or TWOC. This is part of a complete episode.

Transcript of “Let’s Go Twocking and Joyriding”

Grant, in a previous episode we talked about the verb twack, t-w-a-c-k. You remember that?

The term that has been used in Newfoundland for window shopping, right? To shop, to go twacking.

But we neglected to mention the verb twack, t-w-o-c-k. Do you know this one? No, it sounds

Like something Lewis Carroll might have used. Well, you’re right about the British connection.

Anyway, TWOC, T-W-O-C, is the offense of taking a car without an owner’s consent. It’s for the

Purpose of joyriding usually, so you can go TWOCing. So it means car theft, and it’s an acronym

Used in police slang from the words taking without owner’s consent, TWOCing. Oh, yes,

I think I have heard that.

Yeah, it reminds me of back when I was a general assignment newspaper reporter.

Every once in a while, we had to do a stint in what we called the cop shop, which was this little office where you would just go in and you would listen to the police scanner all day.

And they often talked about T-butt, T-butt over $100 or T-butt under $100.

And T-butt was theft by unlawful taking, T-butt.

Oh, nice.

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