"B" Slang

bung

General

Broken, injured or out of order. 'Gone bung' means broken down.

bungee jumper

General

Slang for a patient who repeatedly pulls out a catheter, drip or tube, as if bungee-jumping off it.

bunk warrior

General

The con who runs his mouth from the safety of his bunk — threats, war stories, what he'd do to so-and-so — but goes quiet the second the cell door pops. Pure mattress mafia. The prison cousin of the keyboard warrior.

bunkie

Street

The person sharing an inmate's cell or bunk; synonymous with cellie.

bunnet

General

A soft flat cap, traditionally worn by working men.

bunny hop

General

Riding along and lifting both wheels off the ground simultaneously without a ramp. It is the foundational skill from which almost all BMX street and park tricks are built.

buried

General

One level deeper than slammed. You're not catching up this hour. The rail is full, the window's stacked, and the chef's calling times you already missed. Heads down, push through.

burly

General

Describes a trick, obstacle, or rider that demands real strength, commitment, or experience, often something big and gnarly. It can praise both the feat and the person.

burn

Internet

To send tokens to an unspendable address so they can never be used again, reducing supply. Projects burn tokens to manage supply or as a deflationary mechanism.

burn it

General

Same as 'kill it' — take the steak all the way through. The phrasing is the cook's editorial: a steak ordered well-done is, in their eyes, burnt. Used interchangeably across most American lines.

burn rate

General

Monthly net cash outflow. Gross burn is total spend; net burn is spend minus revenue. Divide cash in the bank by burn and you get runway, the number of months until you're raising or dead.

burn rubber

General

By extension, to do anything in a great hurry.

burn the ice

General

End-of-night bar ritual: dump the bin, hit it with hot water to melt what's left, then scrub. Also a health-code move — you don't reuse last night's ice, and the well needs to be clean before it refills.

burner

Internet

An anonymous side account used to say the stuff you can't say on main. Could be a finsta for close friends, a hate-watching alt, or a sockpuppet for picking fights. Built to be deleted when it gets too hot.

burnout

Internet

Increasingly discussed as a serious wellbeing issue.

burnt out

Internet

Exhausted and depleted from chronic overwork or stress, often with lost motivation.

burst

Gaming

Dealing a massive amount of damage almost instantly, usually a full combo that deletes a squishy target before they can react. Assassins and burst mages live on it, you're dead before the health bar finishes dropping.

bush league

General

Describing minor-league-caliber play or classless, unprofessional behavior; the 'bushes' are the low minors.

bushings

General

The polyurethane rings inside a truck around the kingpin that compress when the rider leans, determining how easily the board turns.

bushranger

General

An armed robber or outlaw who hid in the bush; Ned Kelly is the most famous.

busier than a one-armed paper hanger

General

Overwhelmed with work, like a one-armed man trying to hang wallpaper.

buss

General

To give or send something — usually money, a message, or a favour. 'Buss me the link', 'buss me a ten' — basic transactional MLE.

buss a lime

General

To organise or head off to a casual social outing.

buss a wine

General

To break into a 'wine' — a hip-gyrating dance; a call to dance in dancehall/soca.

buss-up-shut

General

A soft shredded paratha flatbread cooked and beaten so it looks like a 'busted-up shirt'. Also written buss-up-shot.

bussin

Aave

Extremely good, especially of food — delicious. "Bussin bussin" is even better than bussin.

bussin bussin

Internet

An intensified form of "bussin," reserving the highest praise for exceptionally tasty food. The doubling stresses how good it is.

busted

General

The verdict you never want. Busted means sloppy, ugly, or unfinished, especially a look or a face that missed the mark. The direct opposite of beat. On the runway it's the difference between a queen and a 'who let her out the house'.

buster

General

A brevity code directing aircraft to fly at maximum continuous speed — full military power without afterburner.

busy as a cat on a hot tin roof

General

Frantically busy or unable to keep still.

but

General

A distinctively Scots use of 'but' placed at the end of a clause, meaning 'though' or 'however'.

but 'n' ben

General

A traditional simple cottage of two rooms — the 'but' (outer/kitchen) and the 'ben' (inner room).

butch

General

In ballroom terms, 'butch' refers to a trans man, and to the corresponding performance category. Butches walk categories built around their identity — including runway interpretations of European and American fashion-show looks. It's distinct from the wider lesbian/general use of 'butch'; here it's a specific ballroom designation tied to the scene's gender-category system.

butch queen

General

In ballroom's gender system, a butch queen is a gay or bisexual cisgender man. It's not an insult and it's not about being macho — it's a precise category label. Butch queens make up the biggest slice of the scene, and within their categories they can present anywhere from hard masculine (Realness, Sex Siren) all the way to full feminine illusion (Butch Queen Up in Pumps). The term comes straight out of Marlon Bailey's documentation of the culture and the scene's own vocabulary.

butch queen up in drag

General

One of the gender categories in ballroom's own system. A butch queen (a gay or bisexual cis man) who walks the ball serving a full female illusion — face, body, hips, the whole fantasy — but who lives as a man and hasn't medically transitioned. It's a performance lane, not an identity claim. Historically it doubled as a proving ground for femme queens in training: people questioning their gender could test the waters in drag without committing. Ballroom built its own six-part gender model (butch queen, femme queen, butch, woman, man/trade, and butch queen up in drag) decades before the mainstream argued about any of it.

butch queen up in drags

General

In ballroom's gender system, a butch queen is a gay man. 'Up in drags' means he's serving full female illusion for the ball, hair, face, gown, the works, while still living as a gay man, not transitioning and not identifying as a woman. It's a distinct lane in the system, separate from femme queens (trans women) and from butch queens walking as men. The drag is the performance for the floor, not the life.

butch queen up in pumps

General

A butch queen up in pumps — also called butch queen up in drags — is a gay man in the ball scene serving a full female illusion: heels, face, the whole feminine presentation, but only for the category. He doesn't live as a woman or medically transition; the drag is the performance, then it comes off. The phrase is the title of Marlon Bailey's landmark ballroom study and a core entry in the scene's gender vocabulary.

butch queens up in pumps

General

A ballroom category and the title of Marlon Bailey's landmark book on the scene. Butch queens (gay men) walk in pumps, masculine identity meeting feminine footwear and presentation, deliberately blending genders in a single performance. It captures one of the things ballroom does best: refusing to keep gender in tidy boxes and turning the mix itself into the artistry.

butcher

General

A rider who is hard on their equipment and is always snapping, bending, or destroying bike parts. It refers to how roughly they treat the bike rather than their skill.

butcher's hook

Street

Cockney rhyming slang for 'look', almost always shortened to 'butcher's'.

butchers

General

Used for a quick glance or inspection of something.

butches

General

In ballroom, butches are trans men — people who present and live as masculine within the scene's six-part gender system. They're one of the four original gender categories the culture recognised (butch queens, femme queens, butches, women) before the system expanded. Note the scene-specific meaning: this isn't the broader lesbian sense of 'butch' — in ballroom it's a precise gender designation for trans-masculine walkers.

butt

General

Mate, pal, friend. The standard Valleys form of address — 'alright, butt?' is how you greet anyone from the milkman to your best mate. Has nothing to do with the American 'butt' meaning arse; this one is pure Welsh warmth.

butter

General

Mortar, in a bricklayer's mouth — and especially the act of applying it. You 'butter' a brick the way you butter toast: a smooth layer on the end before pressing it into place. Tells you the consistency they're after — spreadable, not soupy, not stiff.

butter bar

General

The freshest officer in the room. A second lieutenant wears a single gold bar that looks like a pat of butter, hence the nickname. Carries the implication that they outrank you on paper but don't know what they're doing yet, so the salty NCOs are quietly running the show.

butterbar

General

A second lieutenant or ensign, named for the single gold bar of the rank insignia. Connotes inexperience.

butterface

General

A mean little pun: 'butterface' = 'but her face.' The idea being everything about her looks good but her face. It's crude, it's sexist, and it knows it. Started in Black college and queer slang in the 90s as 'butta face' before bros dragged it mainstream in the 2000s. Urban Dictionary made it Word of the Day in 2009 and people rightly clocked how nasty it is.

butters

General

Ugly. Properly unattractive. Brutal little word that does a lot of damage in two syllables. Used about people or, more harshly, faces.