Slang Flashcards
Greaser
Greasers are almost like hoods; we steal things and drive old souped-up cars and hold up gas stations and have a gang fight once in a while.
Soc
We get jumped by the Socs. I’m not sure how you spell it, but it’s the abbreviation for the Socials, the jet set, the West-side rich kids
dig
Me and Darry just didn’t dig each other. I never could
please him.
lift
He could lift a hubcap quicker and more quietly than anyone in the neighborhood.
cancer stick or weed
Dally searched his shirt pocket for a cigarette, and finding none, said, “Gotta cancer stick, Johnnycake?”
Two-Bit grinned and lit a cigarette. “Anyone want a weed?”
savvy
A guy with a madras shirt stepped up. “Let’s get the rules straight— nothing but our fists, and the first to run lose. Right?” Tim flipped away his beer can. “You savvy real good.”
tuff
Tough and tuff are two different words. They liked the Beatles and thought Elvis Presley was out, and we thought the Beatles were rank and that Elvis was tuff, but that seemed the only difference to me.
blade
The medium-sized blond pulled a knife out of his back pocket and flipped the blade open.
bull session
I had been in on bull sessions and his bragging was as loud as anyone’s. But never about Sandy.
hacked off
His father was always beating him up, and his mother ignored him, except when she was hacked off at something.
wisecracker
Two-Bit Mathews was the oldest of the gang and the wisecracker of the bunch.
loned it
For a while there, I thought I was the only person in the world that did. So I loned it.
rumble
At the corner of our block there’s a wide, open field where we play football and hang out, and it’s often a site for rumbles and fist fights.
switchblade
We left when the switchblades came out, because the cops would be coming soon and nobody in his right mind wants to be around when the fuzz show.
heater
We can’t walk alone at all. I started carryin’ a heater.
