General
swoop
What does swoop mean?
British prison practice: walking the yard with your eyes down, hoovering up discarded cigarette butts so you can rip them apart and roll a fresh one from the leftover tobacco. Bottom-of-the-food-chain economics. The desperate skill of the skint and the addicted.
"He'd been swooping all week to put together one half-decent roll-up."
Origin
Documented in Noel 'Razor' Smith's 'The Criminal Alphabet: An A–Z of Prison Slang' (2015). From the swooping motion of bending down to snatch a butt.
Frequently asked questions
What does swoop mean in prison slang?
It means scavenging cigarette dog-ends off the exercise yard floor.
How do you use swoop in a sentence?
"He was down there on the yard trying to swoop a smoke."
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