1930s: Jazzing the Big Apple

“A dollar-three-eighty”

"A dollar three-eighty" means a small (or unknown) amount, given in a nonsense language. The term appears in the Texas Crude (1984) slang collection and it has been described (below) as…

“A face for radio”

An attractive man or woman has a "face for the movies" or a "face for television." To say that someone has a "face for radio" (where that face is not seen) is to say…