Bodenheim slang word of the day: Cake-slashing

February 11, 2010
Cake-slashing: Assault and mayhem (according to glossary in Naked on Roller Skates)

The chippy kept silent. The man she craved was on Blackwell's Island, doing a stretch for cake-slashing, and either of the present contestants was bearable to hotsprat* the intermission. Rones walked up. Rones was always propitiatory until the contumacies of his patrons dived in his direction. In the latter case he was an unstirred bouncer doing his job, or a viscid mongoose, according to the magnitude of the offence--whether it was rabies induced by too much of his diluted formaldehyde, or a studied menace. A man of untold honeys and rapacities. An unregenerate man with a self-unknown heart--Moby Dick's cannibal transplanted to Harlem and educated to more devious ritual and procedure, yet capable of atavistic transgressions.

(From Naked on Roller Skates by Maxwell Bodenheim)

*Hotsprat: Trivial but agreeable entertainment