the cooler
photo credit: "Solitary Confinement" by Matthew Thompson (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0) Definition: (noun) prison or solitary confinement in the prison
Example: Jason was thrown into the cooler after he threw a beer can in the window of a passing police cruiser.
Quote:
“Don't worry about the story's goofiness. A sensible one would have had us all in the cooler.”
This week, I was thinking about the tough talk in old detective movies, where all the dames (women) are called “doll” and “angel” but are generally treated badly by crooks (criminals) and gumshoes (detectives) alike. In The Maltese Falcon (1941) Spade is a rough character, but it’s Peter Lorre—not a woman—that he tells, “When you're slapped, you'll take it and like it.”
In another great exchange from that movie, Wilmer Cook (played by Elisha Cook, Jr.) warns Spade, “Keep on riding me and they're gonna be picking iron out of your liver.” (Keep bothering me and the doctors will be removing my bullets from you at the autopsy.) But even in a movie full of over-the-top gangster slang, Spade criticizes Cook for his dramatic threat, retorting, “The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter, huh?” (The lower the criminal, the fancier the talk.)
As for our word of the week, it has another meaning in slang that is also related to crime and tough guys. In The Cooler (2003) the title character has a unique job. He is such a natural loser that a casino hires him to stand by winners and infect them with his bad luck.
A. C. Kemp | January 26, 2006
