"H" Slang

h-town

Street

Insider shorthand for Houston, Texas — used relentlessly throughout Screwed Up Click-era rap and still the default name-check on any Houston record. If you're calling it H-town, you're claiming it.

haad yer gob

General

Shut up, hold your tongue. 'Haad' = hold, 'gob' = mouth. Can be playful between mates or proper sharp depending on tone — context does all the work.

haar

General

A thick, damp, cold sea fog that drifts in over the east coast of Scotland.

haba

Street

Haba! expresses surprise, mild frustration, or reproach, similar to 'come on!' or 'ah, really?' in English. It has moved fully into Standard Nigerian English usage.

hack

General

A correctional officer. Dismissive inmate slang — the kind of word you mutter, not yell. Mostly heard in US prisons and some Irish/UK nicks. Carries built-in contempt.

hadaway

General

An expression of disbelief ('get away with you') or, in other contexts, encouragement.

haddaway

General

Get away! — exclamation of disbelief when someone tells you something mad. Same job as 'no way' or 'you're having a laugh', delivered with full Tyneside lungs.

hail

General

To greet, salute or acknowledge someone; 'hail up mi bredren'.

hail mary

General

A very long, low-percentage pass thrown toward a cluster of receivers near the end zone as time runs out, in hope of a touchdown.

haircut

General

The discount a lender slaps on collateral before lending against it. Post 10 million in bonds, get a 5% haircut, borrow against 9.5. The buffer protects the lender if the collateral tanks before they can sell it.

hairdryer treatment

General

When a manager screams at a player so closely that it feels like standing in front of a hairdryer.

haka

General

A powerful Māori group dance with chanting, foot-stamping and gestures, famously performed by the All Blacks before rugby matches.

hakky

General

Filthy. Caked in muck. Used for hands, kitchens, kids, pub toilets, anything that needs a proper scrub. Geordie staple — stronger than 'mucky', softer than outright disgust.

half a press

Gaming

In the A Button Challenge, an A press has three parts: pushing down, holding, and releasing. If you hold the button down from a previous level, that level only 'spends' part of the press, so it gets tallied as a half. That's how you get counts like 2.5x A presses.

half and half

General

A Cardiff/South Wales chippy and curry-house staple: your portion comes half chips, half rice, both under the same sauce. Born in the city's Chinese takeaways, now a near-religious order. Asking for it anywhere else in the UK gets you a blank stare.

half rep

General

A repetition performed without completing the full range of motion, cutting the movement short.

half-cab

General

A jumping 180-degree turn performed while rolling backward, bringing the rider back to forward motion. It is named after the caballerial, itself named for skater Steve Caballero.

half-inch

General

To steal. Lift, nick, swipe — usually something small and opportunistic rather than armed robbery.

half-pipe

General

A ramp shaped like a cross-section of a cylinder, made of two quarter-pipes facing each other across a flat bottom. It lets riders build speed and trick back and forth wall to wall.

half-volley

General

A shot or pass struck at the exact moment the ball touches the ground, or just after, generating clean power.

halfpipe

General

A U-shaped ramp made of two opposing quarterpipe transitions, usually with a flat section between them, used to build speed and pump back and forth.

hall cosplay

Internet

A cosplay designed for practicality and mobility so the wearer can walk the halls, sit, and socialize all day, as opposed to an elaborate stage-only build. Also hallway cosplay.

hall h

Internet

The largest programming room at San Diego Comic-Con, where the biggest film and TV panels and announcements happen; famous for its enormous, often overnight, lines.

hallion

General

A good-for-nothing rogue or clown. Used across Ulster and the north of Ireland for someone who's a bit of a wastrel — not quite a villain, more a layabout messer you wouldn't trust with a fiver. Related to the American 'hellion' but softer in tone.

hallyu

Internet

The worldwide surge in popularity of Korean culture, including K-pop, dramas, and film. The umbrella phenomenon K-pop belongs to.

hames

General

A mess or botch. To 'make a hames of' something is to do it very badly or ineptly.

hamilton

Internet

Slang for a $10 note, after Alexander Hamilton's portrait.

hammer

General

A particularly gnarly, high-impact trick, often down large gaps or rails; 'throwing hammers' means landing big, heavy tricks.

hammer down

General

Putting the hammer down means stomping the accelerator and running flat out. The 'hammer' is the gas pedal. Used as both an instruction ('hammer down, we got daylight all the way to Toledo') and as a sign-off wishing the other driver a fast clean run. The CB shorthand for 'go, go, go.'

hammer lane

General

The leftmost lane on a US interstate — the one you use to overtake and to run at speed. Called the hammer lane because that's where you've got the hammer down. Truckers use it as both a literal direction ('moving to the hammer lane') and as shorthand for a hard-charging life on the road. Major trucker magazine even took the name.

hammies

General

Affectionate slang for the hamstrings, the muscles on the back of the upper legs.

hampstead heath

General

The teeth. 'Hampstead Heath' rhymes with 'teeth', and the phrase is shortened to 'Hampsteads', dropping the rhyme.

hampsteads

Street

Teeth — the everyday clip of 'Hampstead Heath'.

hanahaki

Internet

A made-up illness, originating in shoujo manga, in which a person suffering from one-sided love coughs up flower petals; it is only cured when the love is returned or through surgery that removes the feelings.

hand of god

General

Refers to a goal punched in with the hand and wrongly allowed, immortalised by Maradona against England in 1986.

hand performance

General

One of the five fundamental elements of Vogue Femme (alongside catwalk, duckwalk, floor performance, and dips and spins). Hand performance is storytelling with the hands and arms — angular, geometric, sometimes spinning movements that frame the face, paint pictures and narrate without a word. Where arms control is judged on precision, hand performance is judged on what you say with it.

hand ting

Street

A handgun. "Ting" is Jamaican-rooted Caribbean-British slang for thing — so hand ting is literally a hand-thing, a pistol you can conceal in one fist. UK drill out of London birthed it; NYC drill picked it up via the Brooklyn-to-Brixton pipeline.

handbag positive

General

Ward shorthand on the geriatric and acute medical floors: the disoriented elderly female patient who refuses to let go of her handbag, even in bed, even asleep. It's actually a fairly reliable bedside clue to underlying cognitive impairment — they don't know where they are, but they know that bag is theirs.

handbagositis

General

A jocular pseudo-diagnosis extending the 'handbag positive' sign into fake disease form.

handbags

General

When players square up and shove each other in a heated but harmless flare-up that comes to nothing.

handle

General

The chosen nickname a CB user goes by on the air. Picked for color, personality, or your truck — almost never your legal name. Half the fun of CB culture is the handle.

handle the jandal

General

A playful Kiwi phrase meaning to be able to handle a situation. 'Can you handle the jandal?' asks if you can cope.

handpaws

Internet

The gloves or mitts of a fursuit that turn the wearer's hands into animal paws; part of both partial and full suits.

handrail

General

The metal rail alongside a set of stairs, used by street skaters to grind and slide down; a benchmark of gnarly street skating.

hands

General

Yelled by the expo when plates are stacking up under the heat lamps and nobody's grabbing them. Doesn't matter whose section — the rule is whoever hears 'hands' drops what they're doing and grabs a plate. Food sitting in the window is the cardinal sin.

hang five

General

Noseriding with the toes of one foot draped over the nose of a longboard.

hang loose

General

A Hawaiian expression meaning to relax, chill and stay laid-back and positive, often paired with the shaka hand sign.

hang ten

General

A classic noseriding move where the surfer walks to the front of a longboard and hangs all ten toes over the nose.