"Nifty Fifty"

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(CAUTION: This etymology is, uh, extremely upsetting.)

    "Nifty Fifty," we never knew ye!
    An article in the Wall Street Journal (Thursday) compared the currently
high price-earnings ratios (where there are any earnings to have ratios, that
is) to the famously high P/Es of the "Nifty Fifty" in 1974.
     This is from Kathleen Odean's WALL STREET SLANG: HIGH STEPPERS...
(1988), pg. 8:

     Institutional investors once worshipped the _Nifty Fifty_, a group of
glamour stocks and more traditional stocks, including such familiar names as
American Express, J. C. Penny, Avon,and McDonalds.  Some say that the "fifty"
in this _Favorite Fifty_ refers to fifty companies; others, to the stocks'
selling prices of fifty times their earnings.  Market pros in the 1980s
occasionally harken the birth of a new Nifty Fifty or the return of the old,
which fell from glory in 1974.  (The name was parodied in the phrase _Shifty
Thrifties_, a 1984 description of banks that took large credit risks.)
Traders also dubbed the original Nifty Fifty _Vestal Virgins_ from the
legendary six virgins who tended the sacred fire brought by Aeneas from Troy
to Rome.

   The CASSELL DICTIONARY OF SLANG doesn't have "Nifty Fifty," but it has a
"bit of nifty"--sexual intercourse.  Could those Wall Street traders all
along have been thinking--no, impossible!!
   This is from SCREW magazine, 24 May 1976, "Letter from London" by David
Franklin & Tuppy Owens:

_Mastering The Mother Tongue_

..._randy_ (horny)..._bloke_ (guy)..._bird_ (chick)..._real goer_..._ready
sort_..._cert_..._dish_..._corker_..._scrubber_..._local
bike_..._homely_..._pull her_ (pick her up)..._really fancy her_ (meaning
you're ready to dip your wick)..._let's go have it off_ (literally get it
on)..._let's fuck_...(Col. 2--ed.) _ball_..._chemist_ (drugstore)..._french
letters_, (Col. 3--ed.) _johnnies_, or _Durex_ (a trade name)..._pulled your
bird_..._snogging_ or _canoodling_ (heavy petting), _grinding_ (dry humping),
and last but not least, some _touching up_ (copping feels)...(Col. 4--ed.)
_bunk up_, _shag_, _a touch of the rod_, _get a leg over_..._pulling a
bird_..._You're a brick_ means you're all right, a _tight ass_ is a mean
s.o.b., _naughty_ means shocking, _gross_ equals raunchy, _cheeky_ is ballsy,
_saucy_ is sexually cheeky.  If she thinks you're a _little willie_, she's
calling your weenie teenie and if, perchance, you're deemed a _puff_, she
considers you to be no better than a fag. (...)
    _USEFUL MISCELLANIES_
Here are some helpful phrases not included above.
_Orgy_--if you're invited to one of these, don't get your hopes up (or
anything else for that matter).  It simply means a rather wild party.  For an
American orgy, the English use the more precise term _group sex_.
_Swinging_--wild sexual goings on, not wife swapping.
_Fanny_--means cunt, which makes you-know-what a much dirtier novel than our
grandmothers ever imagined.
_The nifty fifty_--female masturbation.  (NO!!!! IT CAN'T MEAN THIS!!! IT
JUST CAN'T!!!  I'LL NEVER READ THE _WALL STREET JOURNAL_ THE SAME WAY
AGAIN!!!!!!!--ed.)
_Wank_--jerk off, something you'll hopefully have no need for.  It's also
known more picaresquely as the _five-knuckle shuffle_.  (Cassell's DOS has
1990s--ed.)
_Bollocks_ or _goolies_--balls.
_Plating_--sucking.
_Bristols_--tits.
_Pissed_--very drunk, not angry.
_Bum_--ass.
_Dose_--the clap.  Though the grunge is alive andwell on the Sceptered Isle,
you'll be happy to hear that crabs are as rare as Chateauneuf-du-Pape at the
Walton's.
_Cunt sucking_--pussy eating.
_Twit_--dumb ass, jerk.
_Knickers_ or _bloomers_--ladies undies.
_On the game_--turning tricks.
_Ponce_--pimp.