British "geezer" = American "gangster"?

[Lynne Murphy]

I mention 'diamond geezer' on my post re geezers:

http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com/2006/06/geezers.html

It really doesn't mean 'gangster', at least not in current BrE.  It often
refers to gangsters, but that's not the same thing.  It means a really
great guy--someone who's a good time and who you can probably rely on-- and
it's associated with East-End gangster slang.  Such a guy in some circles
will be a gangster. It's got heavy connotations of east-London,
not-quite-living-within-the-law attitudes (but in an admiring way), but
saying that someone is a geezer doesn't mean that he's a gangster.

I've just discovered that there's a rugby-team fan club called Diamond
Geezers.  They support the Harlequins and were harlequin
pants/trousers--hence the diamonds:

http://www.diamondgeezers.org.uk/

Lynne


--On Sunday, February 11, 2007 9:35 pm -0500 "Joel S. Berson"
<Berson at ATT.NET> wrote:

> Some support for the "gangster" sense:
>
> On this evening's Biography channel repeat of the Midsomer Murders'
> episode "A Tale of Two Hamlets", the first (so far) murder victim, an
> actor, was known for a role in a film or series about East End
> gangsters called  "The Diamond Geezers".
>
> I now discover there is a real TV program titled "Diamond Geezer"!  A
> DVD being sold right between two Midsomer murder episodes:
> http://www.hmv.co.uk/hmvweb/displayProductDetails.do?ctx=204;5;36;70&sku=
> 594525
> And at least one National Theatre company actor (William
> Scott-Masson) taking credit for appearing in it.
>
> (An ITV inside joke on Midsomer Murders?)
>
> Joel
>
> On Tue, 23 Jan 2007 Jonathon Green wrote:
>> No, a geezer is not a gangster. The Streets (one person rather than
>> a group, as it happens) is very much into charting the life of . ..
>> a geezer, in other words, an ordinary bloke. A gangster might be
>> also be a geezer, and quite possible referred to as such by by his
>> fellow geezers, and indeed gangsters (hence the OED cites), but
>> geezer doesn't mean gangster as such. As you suggest in your final
>> par, it means a 'chap' or 'bloke'. The image is usually
>> working-class, probably London or the Cockney colonies of Essex, and
>> could be, but doesn't have to be a bit of a Jack the Lad. For
>> echt-geezer-dom I recommend the lyrics of the late and quite
>> irreplacable Ian Dury. Those of 'Billericay Dickie' being especially
>> indicative of the type. So, there you are. Orright, my son? As
>> geezers are wont to say amongst themselves.



Dr M Lynne Murphy
Senior Lecturer and Head of Department
Linguistics and English Language
Arts B135
University of Sussex
Brighton BN1 9QN

phone: +44-(0)1273-678844
http://separatedbyacommonlanguage.blogspot.com

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