* Most common are highlighted
10-1 — reception is poor
10-2 — reception is good
10-4 — OK, affirmative, understood, or message received
10-9 — repeat / come again
10-12 — no sensitive info / visitors present
10-13 — road or weather conditions
10-20 — what is your location?
10-21 — call me on the phone
73 — best regards (this one goes back to the days of telegraph communicaton)
88 — hugs and kisses
Basement — channel 1
Baby bear — rookie cop
Bear — cop or cop car
Bear bite — speeding ticket
Bear cage (or bear lair) — police station
Big O — Omaha, Nebraska
Black eye — burnt out headlight
Blue boys — police
Breaker — trying to join communication on a channel
Copy — understood, message received
Down and gone — turning CB off
Gay Bay — San Francisco, California
Go to channel 41 — joke to mess with novice CB’ers (CBs usually only go to channel 40)
Good buddy — fellow CBer, however, in modern times this is usually used as slang for gay male prostitute
Handle — CBer’s nickname
Lot lizard — prostitute
Make the trip — switch frequencies
Maul — (as in, “Droppin’ the maul”) to over power weaker stations
Mayday — help!
Meatwagon — ambulance
Midnight shopper — thief
Miss Piggy — female cop
Mobile mattress — RV / camper
Mud — coffee
Mud duck — CB’er with poor signal
Q-bird — intermittent tone generator
QRM or Q-R-Mary — radio interference occurring
QRX — standby
QSO — conversation
QSL — card sent by CB’ers to verify contact
QSY — change frequency
Quiz — alcohol breath test
Rubberbander — new CBer
Smokey dozing — parked police car
Skip (or shooting skip, talking skip) — when conditions are good for communicating very long distances on CB
More coming soon!