geezer
/ˈɡiːzə
/noun
1British informal A man: he strikes me as a decent geezer...
- They are the proverbial cheeky London chappies, as cocky as two geezers barely out of their teens are entitled to be when blessed with an obvious talent.
- He's a sound bloke, solid, reliable and in short a diamond geezer.
- I might add that the guy doing the stage running around was a top geezer.
1.1North American informal, derogatory An old man.Where Jim was a lean, flexible, athletic type, this old man before me was an enormous old geezer who would've had the good sense to glue his fat lips shut every morning....
- They fool everyone into believing they're all powerful, but then you get up close and peel back the curtain, and it's just some old geezer with a few levers sticking out of the control panel.
- I'm willing to bet it belonged to some old geezer.
Origin
Late 19th century: representing a dialect pronunciation of earlier guiser 'mummer'.
An informal word for a ‘man’, geezer represents a dialect pronunciation of the earlier form guiser (related to disguise) meaning ‘mummer, someone who dresses up’. In recent use it sometimes has a connotation of shady dealing.