Prison Slang That Escaped Into Everyday English
5th Jul 2026
Learn some words and phrases that have escaped confinement and made it into the common vernacular.
Cold-Turkey
Coined in 1921 in The Daily Colonist, the first addicts to quit and call it ‘cold turkey’ were inmates under the observation of Dr Carleton Simon, Deputy Commissioner of the narcotics bureau in New York in the 1920s.
Prisoners, without access to drugs (commonly opiates or cocaine, at the time), exhibited symptoms of cold, clammy skin and goosebumps, like a turkey which has been refrigerated. This is a common theory as to how the withdrawal method gained its name. Today, many people quit far broader kinds of addictive habits, and often this won’t involve jail time at all.
Caught red-handed
This term is believed to have originated in 15th-century Scottish poaching law, if a thief were to be caught red-handed (or, in 1432, “taken reid hand”), it meant that a poacher had been caught and arrested with the blood of a stolen animal still on their hands.
Such evidence meant they were able to be punished immediately by the baron or landowner who had been wronged, whereas if they were not “taken reid hand,” they would be tried before the sheriff or Old Bailey before punishment occurred. Today, of course, one might be ‘caught red-handed’ if they are discovered in the middle of any (usually negative) action.
Stretch [of time]
Used to refer to spending an amount of time in a particular place or dedicated to a particular purpose, any of us might have done a stretch at this or that company (or, on the flip side, been unemployed for a stretch).
This is an evolution from its original meaning, where in the 19th century, a ‘stretch’ was a prison sentence. Well, stretch itself is from Old English first used as a countable noun in reference to time in the 1800s.
Stir-crazy
You might hear someone say they’ve gone ‘stir-crazy’ if they’re feeling restless while stuck indoors. Today, that’s often owing to weather conditions (I’m sure plenty of people were feeling a tad stir-crazy throughout the notably damp beginning of 2026). However, the feeling has certainly mellowed since the 19th century.
Originally, ‘stir’ was thieves’ slang for ‘prison’, and ‘stir-crazy’ referred to an inmate who had gone mad as a result of a period of imprisonment - or “doing a stretch.” Some theorise ‘stir’ comes from the Romani term staripen, which means ‘prison’. Others believe it comes from London’s famed Newgate prison, often called Start Newgate in the 19th century, which evolved to stir, and then grew to refer to all prisons.
Ordeal
Today, an ordeal might refer to an experience that tests a persons endurance or patience, however it was once a judicial term!
The term evolved from a Proto-Germanic noun meaning “judgement,” specifically with the implication that it had been dealt by the gods. In ancient systems of justice, an ordeal was a specific type of trial where a defendant underwent an extreme physical hardship to allow a divine power to determine their guilt - picture a witch hunt, where the accused might be tied up and tossed into water, and their guilt was decided by whether or not they drowned.
Ordeal fell out of use after the Norman Conquest, and the modern term was possibly borrowed back from medieval Latin or French. This would explain the metaphorical bend of the English term, while in other Germanic languages (oordeel in Dutch, urteil in German) related terms still mean ‘judgement’ or ‘verdict.’
Working [your fingers] to the bone
The Victorian era saw many transformations in the prison system and introduced a prison culture that revolved around daily hard labour. Roughly 10 hours each day were spent doing repetitive, gruelling labour designed to make prisoners feel as if they were wasting their lives away.
One of those tasks was called oakum picking, where prisoners would sit for hours on end pulling the individual fibres out of ropes. Today, we say we’ve worked our fingers to the bone hyperbolically. Back then, it was often true that the task would leave prisoners with raw, bleeding fingers, sometimes even exposing the bone.
Earmarked
When you think of medieval punishments, it’s very likely the first thing you picture is the pillory (though perhaps you might call it the stocks - thank Hollywood for that).
Prisoners would spend hours or even days at a time locked into the pillory for passersby to ridicule and throw nasty things at them, which was deeply unpleasant on its own. However, a sentence to the pillory could also get worse.
If you were pilloried by the ears, you would spend your sentence with both ears nailed to the wood until you completed it. At that point, your ears would be sliced clean off to free you from the pillory, leaving you ‘earmarked’ as criminals. Though the term previously existed in the context of livestock identification, its current definition of any distinguishing mark originated with the pillory.
Rack one’s brain; nerve racking
The rack was a torture device introduced in the Tower of London around 1420. A victim would be tied by the wrists and ankles to either end of the frame which would then be extended, causing their hips, knees, shoulders and elbows to be dislocated.
These days, most racking is done metaphorically, and the term is used in many settings related to strain, stress, and (light) torture. Interestingly, you may also see these phrases using the spelling ‘wrack’, which is realistically interchangeable in the current vernacular, but actually has different etymological roots, coming from the Middle English word for shipwrecks. For the sake of your more pedantic friends, ‘rack’ might be used for contexts regarding strain (e.g. nerve racking), whereas destruction would have the ‘w’ (e.g. wrack and ruin).
Put the kibosh on [it]
If we put the kibosh on today, that usually means that something is stopped from continuing or taking place, like cancelling plans. Once, though, putting the kibosh on meant the end to a life.
Many scholars believe that it is an evolution from the Irish caip bháis, the black cap donned by a judge while pronouncing a death sentence. Others suggest it came from ‘cabos’d’, a beheading where the neck is severed very near to the shoulders, which appears in Elisha Cole’s "An English Dictionary".
Money for old rope
An easy way of making a lot of money might be called ‘money for old rope’ today, indicating that the profit gained is far greater than the speaker perceives the worth of what’s being sold.
Old rope might not be very valuable in and of itself. However, there was a time when pieces of used hangmen’s rope were considered talismans of great luck, and cuttings could be sold for a pretty penny if the hanging was of particular note. Some enterprising individuals would also sneak in cuttings of assorted other ropes as well to expand their profit.
Author: Anne Brenneman
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