"B" Slang

ball of chalk

General

Cockney rhyming slang for 'walk'. Often clipped to 'ball'. Used as both noun and as 'going for a ball of chalk' meaning taking a stroll.

baller

General

Someone who plays basketball, particularly a skilled one; also broader slang for a successful person.

balletcore

Pop

Used adjectivally for clothing or styling that nods to dancewear.

balling

General

Living lavishly — spending freely, wearing the labels, in the section ordering bottles. Doesn't require actual wealth; performing it counts.

ballooning

Gaming

Grabbing a redeploy balloon, zipping up the line, then launching into a glide to cover ground fast. Classic Apex rotation tool.

balls to the wall

General

Going as fast or as hard as possible, with nothing held back.

bally

Street

The black balaclava that's basically the uniform of UK drill — full face covering with eye holes, worn for music videos, in the field, and increasingly as a streetwear flex. If a video has masked-up youts on a block, they're in ballys.

baltic

General

Bitterly, eye-watering cold. Heard across the UK now but lives strongest in Scouse and Scottish speech. Coat-and-two-jumpers weather.

baltimore chop

General

A ball hit sharply downward near home plate so it bounces high enough that the batter can beat it out for a hit.

baltri

General

Something (or someone) undesirable, uncomfortable, or off — a 'bad trip' feeling.

bam

General

A foolish, aggressive or obnoxious person; a troublemaker.

bambi

General

A deer on or near the highway, or the splattered remains of one. Drivers call it out on the CB so the next rig doesn't end up wearing it. Hitting a Bambi at 70 mph isn't cute — it'll cave in your bumper and your morning.

bammy

General

A round flatbread made from grated cassava, often fried and served with fish.

bampot

General

An idiot, fool or unhinged individual; more forceful than 'numpty'.

bamps

General

A South Wales pet name for one's grandad, alongside 'bampi'.

banana

General

Slang for a patient who is visibly yellow with jaundice.

banana bag

General

A bag of IV fluid containing thiamine, folic acid, a multivitamin, and magnesium, used to correct deficiencies in patients with alcohol use disorder or malnutrition. Its yellow color comes from the riboflavin and folic acid.

banana for scale

Internet

The internet's unofficial unit of measurement. You drop a banana next to whatever you're showing off so viewers can size it up at a glance. Half practical, half joke — and if you forget the banana, the comments will demand one.

banana oil

General

Smooth, greasy persuasion meant to butter someone up.

band

Internet

A single stack of $1,000 held by a currency band; plural 'bands' for more.

band-aid hospital

General

Slang for a small or under-resourced hospital that can provide only basic patch-up treatment before transferring anything serious.

bandbox

General

A ballpark with short outfield dimensions where home runs come easily.

bando

Street

An abandoned house. In Atlanta hip-hop it specifically means an empty property taken over as a base for selling drugs — the cheaper, more disposable cousin of a trap house.

bands

Street

Used to talk about wealth, earnings, or the cost of something pricey.

bandulu

General

Fraud, a scam or racket; also the person running it. 'Bandulu business' = illegal dealings.

bandwidth

General

A person's or team's available capacity to take on additional tasks. Borrowed from data transmission to describe human workload.

bandz

Street

Thousands. One band is $1,000 — a thousand singles or ten hundreds wrapped with a rubber band. The 'z' spelling is the strip-club / trap-rap stylisation; Juicy J's 'Bandz a Make Her Dance' canonised it in 2012 and the spelling stuck.

bang

Internet

The four core meme stocks that ran together in early 2021 — BlackBerry, AMC, Nokia, GameStop. Bundled because retail kept rotating between them on the same WSB threads. A 'BANG portfolio' meant you were leaning fully into the squeeze trade, not picking one horse.

bang a u-ey

General

To execute a U-turn while driving. 'Bang' here just means 'make' or 'do' — Bostonians also 'bang a left' (turn left) and 'bang a right'. Essential vocabulary for surviving Massachusetts driving.

bang a uey

General

To make a U-turn while driving. 'Uey' = U-turn.

bang switch

General

Jocular slang for the trigger of a weapon — the switch that makes it go bang.

bang to rights

Street

Caught in the act with no possible defence; certain to be convicted.

bang-up

Street

The scheduled time at which prisoners are locked in their cells.

bangarang

General

A loud disturbance, hubbub or chaotic commotion. Title of a classic Lester Sterling ska tune.

banged up

Street

Locked in a cell, or more generally imprisoned.

banger

General

Fan slang for a really good goal, usually a hard-hit strike from range that leaves the boot like a gun going off.

banging

General

Welsh English intensifier for something outstanding, especially food or music.

banging weights

Street

Lifting weights, a central pastime for many prisoners.

banjee

General

Banjee describes a streetwise, hyper-masculine urban look and attitude — someone who can hang with the roughest crowd and blend straight into the hood. In ballroom it doubles as a Realness category (sometimes called Banjee or Thug Realness): you have to pass convincingly as that tough urban guy, no softness clocked. The word came out of Black and Latino queer New York.

banjee boy

General

A banjee boy is the performer who walks the tough-street category — projecting hard, hip-hop-flavoured masculinity, the kind of swagger that reads as 'don't mess with me' from across the room. The look and attitude are pulled straight from urban street youth. Banjee boy categories have been part of vogue balls since the early 1980s, and Paris Is Burning popularised the figure beyond the scene.

banjee realness

General

A realness category built around the banjee look: rough, hood, hyper-masculine street presentation. Judges aren't grading whether you're glamorous, they're grading whether you read as a real tough guy off the block, no clocking, no slipping. Featured in Paris Is Burning, where the whole game of realness is passing so completely that nobody would question you. Banjee realness is that, aimed at convincing street masculinity.

banjo hitter

General

A hitter who lacks power and usually produces bloop singles, said to sound like the plink of a banjo off the bat.

bank

Internet

Slang for a big pile of money; 'make bank' means to earn a lot.

bank-to-wall

General

A feature where a sloping bank leads up into a vertical or near-vertical wall, sometimes with a gap between them, letting riders ride up onto the wall. Wall rides and taps are done here.

banker

General

A stonemason who works at a 'banker' (the heavy bench), cutting and dressing blocks to shape before they ever reach the wall. The bench-bound counterpart to the fixer mason who sets the stone on site. Skilled, slow, expensive work.

bankroll

Internet

The money someone has available to spend or invest; as a verb, to fund something.

banksman

General

The trained signaller responsible for safely guiding lorries, dumpers, and especially cranes around a site. They're the eyes the driver doesn't have, using hand signals or radio. On any decent UK site, reversing without a banksman is a sackable offence.

banquette

Street

The sidewalk. Pronounced 'BANK-it' by old-school New Orleanians, this is one of those Yat words that flags you as either local or read-up.