kife

(kaifa, khyfer, kifer, kyfer, kyf)

n

British

a.

a woman or women as a sexual partner or sex object

b.

sexual activity (invariably heterosexual)

► 'Bangkok was OK - plenty of kifer.' (Recorded, petroleum engineer, London, 1987)

This word in its various spellings is now rarely used. It was nearly always restricted to working-class, underworld or armed-services slang, with an area of meaning now more often catered for by words such as crumpet, tottie or rumpo. The exact ety-mology of the term is obscure; it may be a 19th-century alteration of an Arabic word keyif, meaning sensual consolation. As the definition implies, the word is used exclu-sively by men.