There’s not really much to it beyond the fact that we tend to think of pigs as being uncouth and incompetent. Police have been called pigs since at least 1811, where the slang term is first attested, as mentioned, as a piece of underworld slang. “Pigs” in particular is the most widely used in the English-speaking world and is used in Britain, the U.S. Most of these terms were most common in the U.S., though you would certainly also hear them elsewhere. Most people will still understand the meaning of this one today, but most people do not refer to the police by this name anymore.Īgain, this would generally be used by people who were fleeing or avoiding the police. “I’ve got the heat on my back, I need somewhere to hide,” for example.Īnother one that people still understand today but which was far more common in the 1950s is “the fuzz” or just “fuzz”. It is less derogatory but it would naturally usually be used by people trying to avoid the police. This was apparently particularly used by hot-rodders, though it was also more broadly used by people particularly in the United States. “Look out, the pigs are coming,” for example.Īnother term widely used in the 1950s which you don’t really hear as much today is “heat”. This one is used across the English speaking world even today. 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. One term that was particularly popularized during the 1950s, though which had been used as underworld slang since long before that, was “pigs”. 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.
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