# British Slang
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927
**Category:** Factual Questions
**Created:** [September 9, 2019, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927 "2019-09-09T12:51:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 9
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Fleetwood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fleetwood)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/1 "2019-09-09T12:51:55Z")
I recently watched some episodes of the British TV program The Bill from the early nineties. A couple of times they referred to prostitutes as Toms (or Thoms?). What is this word derived from?
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### Author:  [@Jasmine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jasmine)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 12:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/2 "2019-09-09T12:56:24Z")
[\*\*Try this. \*\*](https://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/20/messages/837.html)
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### Author:  [@Baron\_Greenback](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Baron_Greenback)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/3 "2019-09-09T13:00:29Z")
The Guardian’s Notes and Queries did this a few years ago, but couldn’t come up with a definitive answer :
[https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-26198,00.html](https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-26198,00.html)
The most popular choices were:
1. Rhyming slang from “Thomas More” = “whore”, and
2. from “tom-cat”, as in going about their business at night, in alley-ways.
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### Author:  [@The\_Stafford\_Cripps](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Stafford_Cripps)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 1:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/4 "2019-09-09T13:00:39Z")
It seems that [no one is quite sure](https://www.theguardian.com/notesandqueries/query/0,5753,-26198,00.html), but the most authoritative explanation there was that it refers to tom cats going around in the night, and is not, as one might assume, rhyming slang.
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### Author:  [@bob\_2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/bob_2)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 1:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/5 "2019-09-09T13:15:01Z")
The website linked above says (among other things) this:_" Tom" meaning a prostitute is a slang term used in London UK, and, if TV shows are to be believed, its usage is particularly prevalent in the Police Force."_
I would suggest that its usage is mainly confined to TV shows and novels which feature the police. I have heard ‘Pro’s’ ‘Prozzies’, and ‘tarts’. Newspapers talk about ‘streetwalkers’ and ‘ladies of the night’ (belle-de-nuit en Francais which sounds much classier) and ‘sex workers’ which puts them in the same bracket as navvies and carers. Of course, there are always escorts which are generally assumed to be prostitutes who don’t actually work in a brothel or hang around on street corners. But outside of TV and novels, I don’t believe it is in general usage.
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### Author:  [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/6 "2019-09-09T14:32:21Z")
Not the only slang terms for them either. They are also known as “brasses”. Possibly from brass flute-prostitute or brass rubber-scrubber.
Who knows? I mean prostitutes and cockneys? completely outside my comfort zone and a bit common, grubby and squalid, wouldn’t be seen dead with one.
I don’t know anything about prostitutes either.
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### Author:  [@Treppenwitz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Treppenwitz)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 4:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/7 "2019-09-09T16:05:58Z")
A couple of insights from [Eric Partridge](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Partridge):
In **A Dictionary Of The Underworld** he has “_Tom_: a prostitute; also _Brass_; extant; short for _tomboy_. In mid C 19 - early 20, low s[lang] _tom_ meant a mannish sort of prostitute”
In **Shakespeare’s Bawdy** [a compendium of the filth in Shakespeare] he has: “tomboy: a light wench, a woman full of game [ie, sexual]; a whore. Iachimo, maligning Posthumus to Imogen, says to the latter that he pities her for being ‘partner’d With tomboys, hired with that self-exhibition Which your own coffers yield!’, _Cymbeline_, I, vi, 120-122. In Shakespeare’s day, _tomboy_ was a pejorative - a wild girl - especially a sexually wild girl”
(FWIW, [Grose](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Grose) has nothing).
So the inference is that tomboy is very old, and tom is a more recent shortening of it. If Partridge is right, then it ain’t rhyming slang.
j
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### Author:  [@Ludovic](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ludovic)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/8 "2019-09-09T17:01:20Z")
> [@Treppenwitz](#):
>
> a woman full of game
> j
Likes games? Knew she would.
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### Author:  [@Mk\_VII](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mk_VII)
#### Post date: [September 9, 2019, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-slang/839927/9 "2019-09-09T21:16:29Z")
_Brass_: brass nail. Synonym for ‘tom tail’ (of unknown origin but used by the girls themselves). _Toming_: following the trade of prostitution