Dictionary of Playground Slang (Online)

Woman who would tease or make promises of sexual favours in return for some "favour" usually concert tickets. Derived from the description of their usual dress code, i.e. short Tee shirts - showing midriff. Seems common now but it wasn't when I was at high school) thus a Tee-Shirt Tease.

Person with remarkably high forhead, bald person ( from Adverts on tv whose actors were shown with have "high" foreheads.

To have trouble doing something. For example, 'It'll tek ye gaan tae get aall that written up afore the morn man!', i.e. 'You're going to have trouble writing all that up before tomorrow mind!'.

To 'snitch' on somebody when you had done something 'wrong' or rubbed the teachers pet up the wrong way. i.e. somebody telling the teacher about some minor infringement of the rules you may have carried out.

Consists of alerting the authorities (grownups) to some crime committed by a fellow child. Most common phrase: "I'm telling!" (often said in a really whiney way with the first syllable draw out).

If you are with a friend next to any big dangerous drop (i.e. Cliff, mountain, fire escape) then you should grab him in such a way that he thinks he is going to fall, but in reality you are holding him so he cannot. The above word is to be shouted as this 'hilarious prank' is played. (ed: I nearly killed someone doing this at a fairground once!)

Past participle of tell = told, as in the expression 'That's ye telt!', after you’ve given someone a good kicking, meaning 'That’s what you get for being rude to me (or similar)'.

A pre-prepared mix of sweets worth 1 or 2 pence each that added up to 10 pence. Normally supplied in a small paper bag.

Someone you'd only find attractive after drinking ten pints.

(ed: I had a mate in Caerffili called Doug who once had a girlfriend he called 'the beast'. She was the epitome of a ten-pinter. When we all went out he'd hide her in a corner in case anyone saw them together. But after a few beers she seemed to soften round the edges and after five or six actually became quite attractive).

Pronounced as 'Tennis baall heed', i.e. someone with their hair shaved so short it's fuzzy like a tennis ball.

An utter fuckwit. Somebody so dense he is unable to understand how much of an unspeakably irritating, mindbogglingly annoying twat other people find him.

The use of this name for this sort of person developed in part from Terry Fuckwit - a character in Viz comic book who was singlehandedly respnsible for introducing and popularising the word 'wibble' in the English langage.

A playground taunt in the form of a song sung to the tune of the "conga" i.e.

"Let's all go to Tesco's
Where [Johnny, Marky, whatever] gets his best clothes,
a la la la, a la la la!

Taunt implies the tauntees parents couldn't afford 'swish' stuff. Note: for those outside the UK that don't know, Tesco's is a huge supermarket chain which was at one time "famous" for selling cheap imported clothing of dubious quality.

As an aside, I always understood that the company had been named after the founders wife - Tess Cohen, but from another source (Michael Oliver) I learn it was in fact created from a combination of TES (from T.E. Stockwell, Cohen's partner) and CO (from CO-hen)). You live and learn!

(ed: wasn't sure whether to put this in Seedy Songs or here. This won!)

This was not so much a word but a song. It went:

Lets all go to Tesco's
Where [John's] mum buys his best clothes
Nah nah nah nah
Nah nah nah nah

It was chanted at the kids who came to school in scabby clothing or fake designer goods which were so obviously fake. Not sure if it originated from someone bringing it back to our school or because a big Tesco store was built in the town which started to sell clothes at cheap prices.

This went on particuarly when there was all that fuss a few years back with Tesco's stocking Levi's jeans and the people at Levi's not being very happy about it. Didn't matter that they were real Levi jeans - just that you were too cheap to buy them for full price at a proper jeans shop!!

It wasn't really just a word either, it was a song. We wouldn't, for example, call "John" a Tesco, the song would just be sung relentlessly at him and he would never ever come to school in that jumper/trousers/shoes/whatever again.

By the time we'd gone into 6th Form we were much more mature and never sang such silly things!

(ed: yeah right... )

To masturbate in public places. Named after someone caught masturbating on a school trip.

Testicles.

A time of abject poverty for masses of citizens of the UK despite billions of dollars flowing into the Treasury coffers from oil revenue.

Alternative view of this period passed on by Mike Blackburn: The 'Thatcher Years' were simply a period during which Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister of the UK. Your definition above is rubbish. This was the time of the housing boom in Britain, the yuppie arrived, there was a perceived turning away from any corporate mentality and an embracing of selfishness and personal gain. There was not widespread poverty, any more than there was during any other decade of the 20th century. The gap between rich and poor, however, did grow rather alarmingly.

NOBODY refers to Thatcher Years as being a time of great poverty, aside, maybe, from misinformed Americans (you don't think Americans can be misinformed? Who voted for George W then?).

(ed: I'm Welsh by birth and lived in Wales during most of the Thatcher Years. I know there was desperate poverty amongst many, many people - because I lived the horror myself and saw first hand the collapse of communities. There were streets I know where the only person working was employed by the DSS to administer payments to the others. The comment about the gap widening between rich and poor was spot on and resulted in Cardboard City - which was a community of hundreds of impoverished people who, had to live in boxes under Waterloo Station in the heart of 'affluent London'. And this was just one instance of overt degeneration of society under that government.

Personally I think Mike was insulated somehow from the worst of Thatcherism. The larger part of the population suffered - badly!)

Kevin sends in the following addition:

3 million unemployed officially but more like 6 million in reality. Miner's Strike; destruction of Britain's industrial base; top 10% never better off; bottom 10% never worse off. (ed: Anyone want to expand further - either side of the equation?) UK

'Today' as indicated by the local dialect.

People used to sing the opening line of this school hymn:

The land is yours oh God,
You nourish it with rain.

This was popular because if sang in a certain manner, an all too obvious expletive could be constructed:

The land is yours oh god,
You nouriSH IT with rain.
The word SHIT was over emphasised and everyone at Ley Hill Middle School (Sutton Coldfield) was in on the joke... thus making for particularly amusing assemblies.