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friendly. But here we’ve looked at slang used by the police
themselves. Puns are popular, and some of the more obscure terms
have overlaps with cockney rhyming slang – unsurprising given
the size and influence of the Metropolitan Police in London.
You might expect police slang to reveal disdain for
criminals, but actually this makes up a very small part of the
overall range of slang used. Instead, police officers have a
remarkable number of terms to mock their workshy colleagues.
1. Blues and Twos: A term in use among the general public
as well, this refers to the two-tone siren and flashing blue lights of
a police car. A greater variety of sirens are now in use; police
slang is often quite slow to change, with forms and procedures
retaining nicknames that made sense decades ago.
2. Olympic torch: Just as the Olympic torch never goes out,
this term refers to an officer who never leaves the station.
3. Station Cat: Similarly, the ‘Station Cat’ is the officer who
wanders around preening themselves like an arrogant tomcat,
finding any excuse possible to avoid work.
4. K9: An official name that must have been dreamt up by
someone with too little to do that day, a K9 unit – say it out loud –
is a dog unit.
5. Giving his drum a spin: This refers to searching a
suspect’s house. What’s particularly interesting is that the term
‘drum’ for ‘house’ has been suggested as Cockney Rhyming Slang
– ‘drum and bass’ = place – except that this term predates drum
and bass as a genre. The idea of giving it a ‘spin’ suggests the
drum of a washing machine rather than the musical variety, which
in its own right is a surprisingly domestic metaphor.
Restaurant Professionalisms
While doctors and the police are increasingly having to
avoid slang, for fear of it being recorded digitally and needing to
explain their comments in court, one field where slang is alive and
well is the restaurant industry.

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