"D" Slang

dapper

General

By extension, someone with smooth, polished charm.

daps

General

Plimsolls, gym shoes, the canvas pumps you wore for PE. By extension, trainers in general for many South Wales speakers. Rest of the UK calls them pumps, plimsolls, sandshoes or gutties depending where you're from — in Wales and Bristol, they're daps.

dar muela

General

To flirt or persuade someone with a stream of smooth talk and compliments. The talk itself is 'muela'.

darby and joan

Street

Cockney rhyming slang for 'moan' (to complain), and separately a byword for a devoted old married couple.

dardy

General

Cool or great; originating in Aboriginal English of south-western Western Australia and adopted by teens more broadly.

darg

Street

A close male friend, homie, or gang associate. The UK drill spin on 'dawg' — same energy, different accent. You'll hear it all over London road rap when someone's repping their inner circle.

dark academia

Pop

A mood romanticizing learning, mystery, and old-world intellectual life.

dark green

General

An expression reflecting the Marine ideal that there are no black or white Marines, only 'dark green' and 'light green' ones — all Marine green first.

dark romance

Internet

Romance that goes where vanilla romance won't. Mafia bosses, stalkers, captors, anti-heroes who do genuinely awful things. The point isn't that it's pretending to be wholesome — it's labelled, content-warned, and read with full consent by an audience that wants the danger. Massive on BookTok and a publishing juggernaut.

darkmans

General

The night or darkness; the canting word for night-time, when much of the rogues' work was done.

darkslide

General

A trick, invented by Rodney Mullen, in which the rider flips the board upside down and slides along an obstacle on the grip-tape side before flipping back to ride away.

darling

Internet

A term of affection for someone who is dearly loved or favored.

darlo

General

Casual nickname for Darlington and, by extension, Darlington FC (the Quakers). Used the same way Boro means Middlesbrough — quick, local, and absolutely not what you'd put on a train ticket.

darn tootin'

General

An emphatic, wholesome way to say 'you bet' or 'damn right.'

dash

General

To throw, chuck or toss. Patois-derived verb that replaced 'throw' wholesale in MLE. You dash something in the bin, dash a punch, dash someone the ball.

dash dancing

Gaming

Rapidly dashing one way then the other so your character jitters in place. It keeps you mobile, lets you whiff-punish on a dime, and messes with the opponent's spacing reads.

dash weh

General

To throw something away, discard it, or get rid of it. Also used to mean to miscarry.

dashboarding

Gaming

Closing the whole game, Alt+F4 on PC or back to dashboard on console, right before you die so the leaver penalty never registers. Devs hate it, bans followed.

date me pile

Internet

A shareable document or post in which someone advertises themselves as open to dating, common in some online communities.

daterview

Internet

A date dominated by a stiff barrage of personal questions and vetting, lacking the natural flow of a real connection. It feels evaluative rather than romantic.

davenport

General

A sofa or couch, a term surviving especially among older speakers in the Upper Midwest.

dawlin'

Street

Darling, but stripped of any romantic weight — in New Orleans it's how you address the cashier, the stranger holding the door, your cousin, the cop writing your ticket. Default friendly mode of address, regardless of age or relationship.

dawn patrol

General

Going surfing first thing in the morning to catch the cleanest conditions and beat the crowds.

dawta

General

A woman, girl or girlfriend; a respectful/affectionate term especially in Rasta speech.

day drinking

General

Used to describe how daytime drinking hits harder and gets messy fast.

dc

Internet

The credit tag for whoever choreographed the dance you're doing. TikTok etiquette: copy someone's moves without a DC and the comments will find them for you. Largely TikTok and Reels turf.

dcap-btls

General

A checklist for the trauma physical exam: Deformities, Contusions, Abrasions, Punctures/penetrations, Burns, Tenderness, Lacerations, Swelling.

dd

Internet

Short for 'due diligence.' On r/wallstreetbets it's a thesis post — sometimes a serious deep-dive into fundamentals, sometimes 4000 words of crayon-eating cope dressed up as analysis. The 'DD' flair is one of the sub's load-bearing post types, and the best DDs (Roaring Kitty's GME write-up being the obvious one) become legend.

dd 214

General

The form documenting a member's separation from active duty, essential for claiming veteran benefits.

ddd skip

Gaming

An SM64 skip that uses built-up BLJ speed to blast through the moving Bowser painting and reach the basement without meeting the normal star count for Dire Dire Docks.

de-risk

General

To take steps that make a plan or investment less likely to fail.

dead

Internet

Reacting to something hilarious, as in dying laughing.

dead cat bounce

General

A short-lived recovery in the price of a declining asset that fools people into thinking the worst is over, before the slide resumes. The grim image: even a dead cat will bounce if it falls far enough. Traders use it to dismiss rallies they don't trust.

dead horse

General

Tomato sauce (ketchup), by rhyming slang.

dead money

Internet

Dead money is capital tied up in a security that shows little prospect of appreciation or income over the relevant horizon. The funds are effectively idle even while invested.

dead on

General

Great, perfect, decent or all right. Can describe a person of good character or confirm agreement. Northern Irish.

dead plate

General

A plate that can't go to a guest — wrong cook, wrong order, sent back, sat too long, dropped. Dead plates are the staff's dinner if the cook isn't egregious, or the bin if it is. Every dead plate is money walking out the door, which is why chefs hate them on a primal level.

dead presidents

Internet

Slang for American banknotes, referencing the deceased leaders pictured on them.

dead sailor

General

A botched jump where the rider freezes up and stays stiff and motionless in the air instead of committing to the trick, then lands awkwardly. It looks lifeless, like a dead sailor.

dead shovel

General

Grim slang for the seasonal presentation of an out-of-shape person suffering a fatal cardiac event while shoveling snow.

dead-end job

General

A position that offers little or no opportunity for promotion, skill growth, or increased pay, leaving the worker stuck at the same level indefinitely.

deadass tired

General

A fixed intensified expression meaning truly, completely worn out — 'deadass' modifying 'tired.'

deaders

General

Meat or meat products, referred to as 'dead' food that ital-living Rastas avoid.

deadhead

General

Hauling an empty trailer back to base or to the next pickup. Every deadhead mile burns fuel and time with no revenue against it, so drivers and dispatchers obsess over keeping the number low. A bad lane is one where you load out heavy and deadhead the whole way home.

deadlift

General

A foundational compound lift in which you pull a loaded barbell from the floor to a standing, locked-out position.

deadly

General

Excellent or very good; a positive term widely used in Aboriginal English (as in the Deadly Awards).

deadset

General

Truly, genuinely or absolutely; used to affirm something is real.

deadstock

Pop

Old inventory that never sold and sat in a warehouse, now valuable because it's vintage and pristine.