Wide boy is a British term for a man who lives by his wits, wheeling and dealing. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is synonymous with spiv. The word "wide" is in this sense means wide-awake or sharp-witted. Newspapers of the late 1940s and 1950s often use both terms in the same article about the same person when dealing with ticket touts, fraudsters and black market traders. It has become more generally used to describe a dishonest trader or a petty criminal who works by guile rather than force.
The word came to public attention in 1937 with the publication of Wide Boys Never Work by Robert Westerby, a novel about gamblers and hustlers. During World War II such individuals became involved in the black market, but the term only began to appear in newspapers from 1947.
Read more about Wide Boy: Fictional Portrayals, Musical References, Other Usage
Famous quotes containing the words wide and/or boy:
“Devouring Time, blunt thou the lion’s paws,
And make the earth devour her own sweet brood;
Pluck the keen teeth from the fierce tiger’s jaws,
And burn the long-liv’d phoenix in her blood;
Make glad and sorry seasons as thou fleet’st,
And do what’er thou wilt, swift-footed Time,
To the wide world and all her fading sweets;”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
““I took a good deal o’ pains with his eddication, sir; let him run in the streets when he was wery young, and shift for his-self. It’s the only way to make a boy sharp, sir.””
—Charles Dickens (1812–1870)