h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Excellent article, but I found some you forgot. "Porch climber" for cheep liquor, and "cement overshoes", or "cement booties": the act of encasing a person's feet in cement before you throw him off a bridge. I didn't notice "deep 6" - to bury someone.

Funny you should mention that BB, I was thinking of the phrase "Taking someone for a deep six holiday", which I guess means the same thing. The Tom Waits songs 'The One That Got Away' and 'Small Change (got rained on with his own .38)' throw up a few like that.

Hello,

Thanks for the input and suggestions. Yeah, I left a few out there, mainly in the interest of compactness. Of course, those probably should've been added.

I think "Deep 6" may come from the phrase "86 something" meaning to hide it away quickly. That apparently comes from the infamous New York speakeasy Chumley's (still an operating restaurant and bar) located on 86 Bedford Street in the West Village. Pretty spiffy.

Yours,
Jake

Hmmm.... I thought 86 was from American diner slang (there a few other numbers used in that slang which I can't recall, and as the wife's tugging at my shoulder to go out for brekkers - to a diner - I can't look them up right now). I would say that deep 6 comes from being six feet deep, i.e. six feet under the ground.

Hi, Jake:

There's also "slammer" as a synonym for prison, though I don't know
if it was used in the Thirties.

Some of those shows, books, etc. about that period have been parodied
("Johnny Dangerously," for instance), to the point where it becomes
unclear which expressions were really used then, and which ones
were figments of a scriptwriter's imagination.

Keep up the good work

Hello,

Yeah, there have been a lot of parodies through the years. I remember Calvin and Hobbes' "Tracer Bullitt" or Firesign Theater's "Nick Danger" among other things. And then there's the serious pastiche like Murakami's "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" or Lethem's "Motherless Brooklyn".

Thanks for the compliments. Top of the world!

Yours,
Jake

You forgot the most quoted peice of mafia slang in the world: "Sleeping with the fishes"
For those who have never seen any of the Godfather movies it means to be killed and dumped in the sea (or just dumped in cement shoes.)

This was brilliantly parodied in "the Simpsons"

Fat Tony: Oh look there's Troy McClure
Luigi: I thought you said he was dead
Fat Tony: No. What I said was that he sleeps with the fishes.
Luigi: Oh please, man, I'm trying to eat.

Classic

Yeah, I like the way they kept alluding to his fish fetish in that episode (like the fact his house is filled with aquariums).

You forgot my favorite--the "Chicago Typewriter", otherwise known as the Thompson Sub machine gun (or gat). Machine Gun Kelly used it, to much acclaim, in the process of wasting cops.

another great phrase: "getting sent up the river", or "he got sent up-river", which is pretty well known in american english as meaning being sent to jail, comes from new york city. one of the biggest prisons in the area (opened in the beginning of the 20th century, I BELIEVE) is Ossining State Penitentery (sorry i cannot spell today), which is located about 35 miles north of NYC, up the Hudson River. this is the prison more famously known as "Sing-Sing" (which can occasionally be used to discuss prisons in general as well).