Eek
Polari for the face, from backslang: face spelled backwards is ecaf, clipped to eek. Famous from "bona to vada your dolly old eek".
Eek is Polari for the face. A dolly eek is a pretty face, a bona eek a handsome one, and if you are going out, first you powder your eek. It is one of the best-known words of Polari, thanks to the most famous greeting in the language: "bona to vada your dolly old eek", lovely to see your nice old face.
It has nothing to do with the squeal "eek!" of someone who has seen a mouse. Polari eek is a noun, and usually a flattering one.
Where it comes from
Eek is backslang: face spelled backwards is ecaf, and ecaf, said quickly and clipped, becomes eek. Backslang, saying a word as if it were spelled backwards, was one of the tricks that went into Polari, along with cant, rhyming slang and Italian.
The trick is old. Green's Dictionary of Slang finds ecaf in print as early as 1895, and a 1962 study of British gay society lists "ecaf, face" in its glossary of gay slang. A man interviewed for the oral history Between the Acts, remembering the 1930s, explained it simply: "Face is ecaf. Well that's just face backwards". The shortened eek is the form that stuck.
Julian and Sandy
Eek became famous through the BBC radio comedy Round the Horne. Julian and Sandy's sketches often opened with a variation on "How bona to vada your dolly old eek again". In a 1966 sketch retelling Samson and Delilah, Delilah "vadas his sleeping eek" before cutting off his riah. Gay listeners heard every word; the rest of the country heard a funny noise.
How it is used today
Eek is one of the Polari words most likely to come out today, in camp chat, in drag dressing rooms and among men who like their history spoken. A recollection of 1950s gay life published in Gay News around 1970 sums up the whole ritual: "We would zhoosh our riahs, powder our eeks, climb into our bona new drag... and troll off to some bona bijou bar". Swap the bar for an app and very little has changed.
Backslang gave Polari other body words too: riah is hair spelled backwards. With lallies for legs and dish for the backside, you could describe a whole man without a single word of standard English.
For the rest of the language, see bona, omi and zhoosh.
Related terms
Sources 2
- Baker, Paul. "Polari: The Lost Language of Gay Men." Lancaster University, Linguistics and English Language (accessed 19 October 2026). https://lancaster.ac.uk/staff/bakerjp/polari/home
- Green, Jonathon. "eek, n." Green's Dictionary of Slang, online edition. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/3x6dd6q