Riah
Polari for hair, from backslang: hair spelled backwards. Bona riah is great hair, and a riah shusher is a hairdresser.
Riah is Polari for hair. Bona riah is a great head of hair, to zhoosh your riah is to fix it before going out, and a riah shusher is the hairdresser who makes it all possible. Nanti riah, no hair, is a bald head or a fresh skinhead crop.
Hair has always mattered to us, so it is no surprise that Polari had a word for it, and that the word is one of the survivors. Riah is still heard in salons, in drag dressing rooms and in any group of gay men getting ready for a night out.
Where it comes from
Riah is backslang: hair spelled backwards. Backslang, saying words as if they were spelled in reverse, was one of the sources of Polari, together with cant, rhyming slang and Italian. Green's Dictionary of Slang also notes the Spanish raya, a parting in the hair, as a possible influence, but the backwards reading is the simple one.
The word is old. Green's finds it in print in 1896, in a joke about a man who has lost "the chief ornament of man, the riah" on his head. In 1962 a study of British gay society listed it, as riha, in its glossary of gay slang, and a man remembering the 1930s for the oral history Between the Acts put it plainly: "Riah, that's hair backwards".
Riah on the radio
Like eek and lallies, riah reached a national audience through Julian and Sandy on the BBC's Round the Horne. In a 1966 sketch retelling Samson and Delilah, Samson has "long blond riah hanging right down his Jim and Jack", his back, until Delilah gets her scissors out. The joke worked on two levels, as most of theirs did.
How it is used today
Riah is one of the easiest Polari words to drop into modern conversation, because hair is a constant topic. Hairdressers use it, drag queens use it, and it pops up online whenever someone wants to compliment a haircut with a bit of camp history. Green's even has a 2025 social media post describing a skinhead with "nanti riah", proof that the word is still alive and still crossing borders.
Shipmates on the old passenger liners used to rate each other in Polari, and bona riah was high on the list, together with a dolly eek and shapely lallies.
For the rest of the Polari anatomy, see eek, lallies and dish; for what you say when the hair is perfect, see bona.
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. "riah, n." Green's Dictionary of Slang, online edition. https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/gjj5pvq