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:
“Scared, huh. I ain’t never gonna be scared no more. I was though. For a while it looked as though we was beat, good and beat. Looked like we didn’t have nobody in the whole wide world but enemies. Like nobody was friendly no more. Made me feel kind a bad and scared too. Like we was lost and nobody cared.”
—Nunnally Johnson (1897–1977)
“There was never any question with me as to which I would choose, my boy or my work. I had to have both.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (1866–1948)