1950s Slang For Police (Helpful Content!)

Common slang terms in the 1950s for police included some widely used today, such as “pigs”. Other, more specifically 1950s slang for police included the term “heat”, “the fuzz,” and in Britain they were sometimes called “Old Bill” or “Old Bill Peace”. They may also have been called “bobbies”.

Most slang terms for police from this time have endured at least to some extent today, although many also have not.

The most common slang terms of the 1950s were likely those that are still used today, but at the same time there were many you’d never hear today and indeed which you might never even have heard of in the historical context.

Let’s find out more.

What were police called in the 1950s?

Police were called a few different things in the 1950s, and many of the slang terms used for them at the time are also still used today.

One term that was particularly popularized during the 1950s, though which had been used as underworld slang since long before that, was “pigs”.

This obviously is a highly derogatory slang term for police, one used by those who feel the police to be at odds with liberty and freedom in society.

This one is used across the English speaking world even today.

“Look out, the pigs are coming,” for example.

Another term widely used in the 1950s which you don’t really hear as much today is “heat”.

This was apparently particularly used by hot-rodders, though it was also more broadly used by people particularly in the United States.

It is less derogatory but it would naturally usually be used by people trying to avoid the police. “I’ve got the heat on my back, I need somewhere to hide,” for example.

Another one that people still understand today but which was far more common in the 1950s is “the fuzz” or just “fuzz”.

Most people will still understand the meaning of this one today, but most people do not refer to the police by this name anymore.

Again, this would generally be used by people who were fleeing or avoiding the police.

“It’s the fuzz!” for example.

Most of these terms were most common in the U.S., though you would certainly also hear them elsewhere.

“Pigs” in particular is the most widely used in the English-speaking world and is used in Britain, the U.S. and Australia.

Why were police called “pigs”?

Police have been called pigs since at least 1811, where the slang term is first attested, as mentioned, as a piece of underworld slang.

There’s not really much to it beyond the fact that we tend to think of pigs as being uncouth and incompetent.

Police were referred to as pigs because they were thought of as corrupt, clumsy, oafish aggressors, the enemy of the ordinary people, and thus they were called pigs.

 It was in the 1950s that this term was mostly popularized and first widely used, as it had for a long time been a more underground term.  

Why were police called “heat”?

This term can be used in a couple of ways in reference to the police.

The simpler one is simply as a stand in for the police themselves–on the other hand, it is also used as a slang term for being in active trouble with the police.

This is the earlier sense and is first attested in the 1920s, then again later became popularized in the 1950s.

As mentioned, it was primarily used by hot-rodders in the 1950s, and often in the sense that you were involved in a car chase with them.

Something being “hot”, meaning it is likely to get you in trouble with the police, is a term that’s been used for a long time, and this is where it comes from.

Why were police called “the fuzz”?

It’s not entirely clear why the police were originally called the fuzz, though once again the term is first attested in the 1920s and then is popularized in the 1950s.

It is first attested in 1929 as underworld slang, though the precise meaning is not at all clear.

Some have posited that it is a variant of the word “fuss,” in the sense that the police are very hard to please.

This is far from certain, though, and is only a theory.

What else were police called in the 1950s?

 Most of the terms we’ve looked at were most common in America, though they were also used elsewhere.

Other terms you might have heard used for the police in the 1950s, particularly in Britain, included the term “Old Bill” or “Old Bill Peace”.

This was simply rhyming slang with police.

Police were more commonly called “bobbies” or “coppers” in the 1950s in Britain, though to some extent both of these terms do survive today, to a lesser degree. Both of these terms are considered to be relatively dated now, although this is definitely much more true of “bobbies” than of “coppers”.

So, there were a handful of widely used slang terms for police in the 1950s.

Most of them are still used at least to some extent today, although some of them have also died out entirely.

The 1950s was a time of great social upheaval across the world for a variety of reasons, and the police started to come up against more organized resistance than they had in the past–this meant a lot of new terms arose to describe them.

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