Brass Lack of money.
Short form of '
boracic', which is itself short for '
boracic lint' which in
Rhyming Slang means 'a lack of money' (
skint).
"Can't make it tonight man, I'm brass."
Also used in some cases as a more general purpose
negative exclamation, nearly always referring to a lack of something. For example, if something particularly
unlucky happened to someone, a friend might be heard to exclaim
"brass!".
It is
always pronounced 'brass' like '
ass', not 'brass' like '
arse'.
Correction (19th Sept 2001): As Gritchka pointed out to me, the correct spelling is 'boracic', not 'brassic', as I was previously suggesting. Well they sound the same ..
Part of the London Slang Project