6/20/2023 0 Comments Dictionaries of slang![]() That said, many slang terms and expressions are offensive, dealing with vulgar or taboo topics. For instance, groovy dates back to the 1930s-though it has become closely associated with the 1960s.Īs noted, slang is considered a type of informal language-but that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily “wrong” or “bad” or “ignorant” language. Musical team Al Sherman & Harry Tobias drew directly from Cab Calloway’s Cat-ologue: a Hepster’s Dictionary, a lexicon of Harlem jazz musicians’ slang originally published in 1938 ’ when choosing terms for Calloway to define for a young protégée, eager to be schooled in the lingo all the jitterbugs use today. And so, we frequently specify slang by its in-group 9e.g., surfer slang, prison slang, Internet slang, military slang).īut keep in mind this other fact about slang: it’s almost always older than you think, because informal language hasn’t historically gotten documented in the written record. For example, hearing the slang codswallop or groovy probably makes you think of people from specific places (the U.K.) or time period (the 1960s). Today, slang words and phrases often spread-and die out-very quickly thanks to social media.īecause slang is a product of people, place, and time, slang words and phrases are often closely associated with those factors. From five-finger discount to forty-rod whiskey, this is an authoritative and up-to-date record of slang throughout the English-speaking world. There are many exceptions: consider cool, for one. It generally originates within an in-group (especially marginalized communities), and using a slang term is a way of signaling identity in that group.īecause slang is fast-changing and can become quickly outdated, slang words don’t often survive long or pass into the mainstream. Slang can be a single word like cool (“great”) or an expression, such as I feel you (“I relate to you”). Discover more in our slideshow “‘Dog,’ ‘Boy,’ And Other Words That We Don’t Know Where They Came From.” Slang ain’t alone: it finds lots of company in other English words that seem simple but whose origins are not. Another theory links slang to another sense of slang, meaning a “narrow strip of land,” which became associated with the territory that hawkers traveled and their unique speaking style. One now obsolete theory connected slang to sling, imagining slang as the kind of language that’s tossed or thrown around. The word is first recorded around 1750–60, and was used early on for the special, secret lingo of the underground, often referred to as thieves’ cant.
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