12-9 n. Based on the dozens of cases of people struck by subway trains each year—events known in transit parlance by the code 12-9—it is easy to speculate on what their last week must have been like. [ LanguageEnglish RegisterJargon] [full cite] (Dec. 4, 2005)
124-man n. The estimable dean was a lifelong crime reporter from the old Herald Tribune, a gentle sage who taught the pick-pocket art of massaging vivid details from a precinct’s “124-man,” the clerk who controlled “good stuff” filed by cops from the beat. [New York CityEnglishPolice] [full cite] (Apr. 27, 2009)
12th of never n. The Biplane supposedly has a V-4, but the show bike is most likely a make-believe mockup. Looks to be straight out of a video game. When will either Suzuki be produced? Right after the 12th of Never. [EnglishSlang] [full cite] (Oct. 30, 2007)
14-er n. As a man in his 70s, Dr. Reed started climbing the “14-ers,” as they are called: the dozens of mountains in Colorado that rise to 14,000 feet or higher. Friends said that on those steep mountains, where the air grows thin, he outclimbed friends two to three decades younger. [ColoradoEnglishEnvironment] [full cite] (Apr. 14, 2007)
1661 n. The technical term for this—where you look pullable from behind, with your slashed mini, straggly Joss Stone hair and macrame ankle bracelet, but when swivelled around, look more like someone eligible to collect a pension—is 1661. (Get it? Sixteen from the back, 61 from the front.) Oh, dear. Perhaps that’s what I am: the ultimate 1661. Yet isn’t a certain amount of self-delusion necessary in order to cope with the horrible, galloping inevitability of old age? [EnglishApparel, Appearance, & FashionSlang] [full cite] (Jul. 20, 2007)
1661 n. I’ve always detested the expression “mutton dressed as lamb.” It’s misogynist, mean and women are not meat; even Sam Kekovich would concur with that. But there’s a new version of it that describes women who retain hairstyles or wardrobes suited to a different life stage—women such as Melanie Griffith and Faye Dunaway. The term is “1661”—a woman who looks 16 from behind, 61 from the front. [EnglishApparel, Appearance, & FashionBodySlang] [full cite] (Jul. 20, 2007)
1661 syndrome n. The 1661 syndrome—whereby a woman (and it almost always is a woman) looks like a bouncy-tressed, pert-bottomed teenager from behind and a grandmother from the front—has become a cultural joke. [EnglishApparel, Appearance, & FashionSlang] [full cite] (Jul. 18, 2007)