SLANG.
Every child has some idea of what is meant by "slang," because most
schoolboys and schoolgirls have been corrected for using it. By slang
we mean words and expressions which are not the ordinary words for the
ideas which they express, but which are invented as new names or
phrases for these ideas, and are at first known and used only by a few
people who use them just among themselves. There are all kinds of
slang--slang used by schoolboys and schoolgirls in general, slang used
by the pupils of each special school, slang used by soldiers, a
different slang used by their officers, and even slang used by members
of Parliament.
The chief value of slang to the people who use it is that at first, at
any rate, it is only understood by the inventors and their friends.
The slang of any public school is continually changing, because as
soon as the expressions become known and used by other people the
inventors begin to invent once more, and get a new set of slang terms.
Sometimes a slang word will be used for years by one class of people
without becoming common because it describes something of which
ordinary people have no experience, and therefore do not mention.
The making of slang is really the making of language. Early men must
have invented new words just as the slang-makers do to-day. The
difference is that there are already words to describe the things
which the slang words describe. It may seem curious, then, that people
should trouble to find new words. The reason they do so is often that
they want to be different from other people, and sometimes because the
slang word is much more expressive than the ordinary word.
This is one reason that the slang of a small number of people spreads
and becomes general. Sometimes the slang word is so much better in
this way than the old word that it becomes more generally used than
it, and finds its way into the ordinary dictionaries. When this
happens it is no longer slang.
But, as a rule, slang is ugly or meaningless, and it is very often
vulgar. However common its use may become, the best judges will not
use such expressions, and they remain mere slang.
A writer on the subject of slang has given us two good examples of
meaningless and expressive slang. The people who first called
marmalade "swish" could have no reason for inventing the new name
except to seem odd and different from other people. _Swish_ is
certainly not a more expressive or descriptive word than _marmalade_.
The one means nothing, while the other has an interesting history
coming to us through the French from two old Greek words meaning
"apple" and "honey."
The expressive word which this writer quotes is _swag_, a slang word
for "stolen goods." There is no doubt that _swag_ is a much more
expressive word than any of the ordinary words used to describe the
same thing. One gets a much more vivid picture from the sentence, "The
thieves got off with the _swag_," than he would had the word _prize_
or even _plunder_ or _booty_ been used. Yet there is no sign that the
word _swag_ will become good English. Expressive as it is, there is a
vulgar flavour about it which would make people who are at all
fastidious in their language very unwilling to use it.
Yet many words and phrases which must have seemed equally vulgar when
first used have come to be accepted as good English. And in fact much
of our language, and especially metaphorical words and phrases, were
once slang. It will be interesting to examine some examples of old
slang which have now become good English.
One common form of slang is the use of expressions connected with
sport as metaphors in speaking of other things. Thus it is slang to
say that we were "in at the death" when we mean that we stayed to the
end of a meeting or performance. This is, of course, a metaphor from
hunting. People who follow the hounds until the fox is caught and
killed are "in at the death." Another such expression is to "toe the
mark." We say a person is made to "toe the line" or "toe the mark"
when he or she is subjected to discipline; but it is a slang phrase,
and only good English in its literal meaning of standing with the toes
touching a line in starting a race, etc., so that all may have an
equal chance.
We say a person has "hit below the belt" if we think he has done or
said something unfair in an argument or quarrel. This is a real slang
phrase, and is only good English in the literal sense in which it is
used in boxing, where it is against the rules to "hit below the belt."
The term "up to you," by which is expressed in a slang way that the
person so addressed is expected to do something, is a slang expression
borrowed from cards.
Even from these few examples we can see that there are various degrees
in slang. A person who would be content to use the expression "toe the
line" might easily think it rather coarse to accuse an opponent of
"hitting below the belt." There comes a time when some slang almost
ceases to be slang, and though good writers will not use it in
writing, quite serious people will use it in merely speaking. It has
passed out of the stage of mere slang to become a "colloquialism."
The phrases we have quoted from present-day sport when used in a
general sense are still for the most part slang; but many phrases
taken from old sports and games, and which must have been slang in
their time, are now quite good English and even dignified style. We
speak of "wrestling with a difficulty" or "parrying a thrust" (a
metaphor taken, of course, from fencing), of "winning the palm," and
so on, all of which are not only picturesque but quite dignified
English.
A very common form of slang is what are called "clipped" words. Such
words are _gov_ for "governor," _bike_ for "bicycle," _flu_ for
"influenza," _indi_ for "indigestion," _rec_ for "recreation," _loony_
for "lunatic," _pub_ for "public house," _exam_ for "examination,"
_maths_ for "mathematics." All of these words are real slang, and most
of them are quite vulgar. There is no sign that any of them will
become good English. The most likely to survive in ordinary speech is
perhaps _exam_.
Yet we have numbers of short words which have now become the ordinary
names for certain articles, and yet which are only short forms of the
original names of those articles. The first man who said _bus_ for
"omnibus" must have seemed quite an adventurer. He probably struck
those who heard him as a little vulgar; but hardly any one now uses
the word _omnibus_ (which is in itself an interesting word, being the
Latin word meaning "for all"), except, perhaps, the omnibus companies
in their posters. Again, very few people use the full phrase
"Zoological Gardens" now. Children are taken to the _Zoo_. _Cycle_ for
"bicycle" is quite dignified and proper, though _bike_ is certainly
vulgar. In the hurry of life to-day people more frequently _phone_
than "telephone" to each other, and we can send a wire instead of a
"telegram" without any risk of vulgarity. The word _cab_ replaced the
more magnificent "cabriolet," and then with the progress of invention
we got the "taxicab." It is now the turn of _cab_ to be dropped, and
when we are in haste we hail a _taxi_. No one nowadays, except the
people who sell them, speaks of "pianofortes." They have all become
_pianos_ in ordinary speech.
The way in which good English becomes slang is well illustrated by an
essay of the great English writer Dean Swift, in the famous paper
called "The Tatler," in 1710. He, as a fastidious user of English, was
much vexed by what he called the "continual corruption of the English
tongue." He objected especially to the clipping of words--the use of
the first syllable of a word instead of the whole word. "We cram one
syllable and cut off the rest," he said, "as the owl fattened her mice
after she had cut off their legs to prevent their running away." One
word the Dean seemed especially to hate--_mob_, which, indeed, was
richer by one letter in his day, for he sometimes wrote it _mobb_.
_Mob_ is, of course, quite good English now to describe a disorderly
crowd of people, and we should think it very curious if any one used
the full expression for which it stands. _Mob_ is short for the Latin
phrase _mobile vulgus_, which means "excitable crowd."
Other words to which Swift objected, though most of them are not the
words of one syllable with which he declared we were "overloaded," and
which he considered the "disgrace of our language," were _banter_,
_sham_, _bamboozle_, _bubble_, _bully_, _cutting_, _shuffling_, and
_palming_. We may notice that some of these words, such as _banter_
and _sham_, are now quite good English, and most of the others have at
least passed from the stage of slang into that of colloquialism.
The word _bamboozle_ is still almost slang, though perhaps more common
than it was two hundred years ago, when Swift attacked it. Even now we
do not know where it came from. There was a slang word used at the
time but now forgotten--_bam_, which meant a trick or practical joke;
and some scholars have thought that _bamboozle_ (which, of course,
means "to deceive") came from this. On the other hand, it may have
been the other way about, and that the shorter word came from the
longer. The word _bamboozle_ shows us how hard it is for meaningless
slang to become good English even after a struggle of two hundred
years.
We have seen how many slang words in English have become good English,
so that people use with propriety expressions that would have seemed
improper or vulgar fifty or ten or even five years ago. Other
interesting words are some which are perfectly good English as now
used, but which have been borrowed from other languages, and in those
languages are or were mere slang. The word _bizarre_, which we
borrowed from the French, and which means "curious," in a fantastic or
half-savage way, is a perfectly dignified word in English; but it must
have been a slang word at one time in French. It meant long ago in
French "soldierly," and literally "bearded"--that is, if it came from
the Spanish word _bizarra_, "beard."
Another word which we use in English has a much less dignified use in
French. We can speak of the _calibre_ of a person, meaning the quality
of his character or intellect; but in French the word _calibre_ is
only in ordinary speech applied to things. To speak of a "person of a
certain calibre" in French is very bad slang indeed.
Again, the word _fiasco_, which we borrowed from the Italian, and
which means the complete failure of something from which we had hoped
much, was at first slang in Italian. It was applied especially to the
failure of a play in a theatre. To break down was _far fiasco_, which
literally means "make a bottle." The phrase does not seem to have any
very clear meaning, but at any rate it is far removed from the
dignified word _fiasco_ as used in English.
The word _sack_ as used in describing the sack of a town in war is a
picturesque and even poetic word; but as it comes from the French
_sac_, meaning "pack" or "plunder," it is really a kind of slang.
On the other hand, words which belong to quite good and ordinary
speech in their own languages often become slang when adopted into
another. A slang word much used in America and sometimes in England
(for American expressions are constantly finding their way into the
English language) is _vamoose_, which means "depart." _Vamoose_ comes
from a quite ordinary Mexican word, _vamos_, which is Spanish for "let
us go."
It is very interesting to find that many of our most respectable words
borrowed from Latin have a slang origin. Sometimes these words were
slang in Latin itself; sometimes they were used as slang only after
they passed into English. The French word _tête_, which means "head,"
comes from the Latin _testa_, "a pot." (We have seen that this is the
word from which we get our word _test_.) Some Romans, instead of using
_caput_, the real Latin word for "head," would sometimes in slang
fashion speak of some one's _testa_, or "pot," and from this slang
word the French got their regular word for head.
The word _insult_ comes from the Latin _insultarc_, which meant at
first "to spring or leap at," and afterwards came to have the same
meaning as it has with us. The persons who first used this expression
in the second sense were really using slang, picturing a person who
said something unpleasant to them as "jumping at them."
We have the same kind of slang in the expression "to jump down one's
throat," when we mean "to complain violently of some one's behaviour."
The word _effrontery_, which comes to us from the French
_effronterie_, is really the same expression as the vulgar terms
_face_ and _cheek_, meaning "impudence." For the word comes from the
Latin _frons_, "the forehead."
An example of a word which was quite good English, and then came to be
used as slang in a special sense, and then in this same special sense
became good English again, is _grit_. The word used to mean in English
merely "sand" or "gravel," and it came to mean especially the texture
or grain of stones used for grinding. Then in American slang it came
to be used to mean all that we mean now when we say a person has
"grit"--namely, courage, and strength, and firmness. This use of the
word seemed so good that it rapidly became good English; but the
American slang-makers soon found another word to replace it, and now
talk of people having "sand," which is not by any means so expressive,
and will probably never pass out of the realm of slang.
An example of a word which was at first used as slang not many years
ago, and is now, if not the most elegant English, at least a quite
respectable word for newspaper use, is _maffick_. This word means to
make a noisy show of joy over news of a victory. It dates from the
relief of Mafeking by the British in 1900. When news of its relief
came people at home seemed to go mad with joy. They rushed into the
streets shouting and cheering, and there was a great deal of noise and
confusion. It was noticed over and over again that there was no
"mafficking" over successes in the Great War. People felt it too
seriously to make a great noise about it.
A slang word which has become common in England during the Great War
is _sträfe_. This is the German word for "punish," and became quite
familiar to English people through the hope and prayer to which the
Germans were always giving expression that God would "sträfe" England.
The soldiers caught hold of the word, and it was very much used in a
humorous way both at home and abroad. But it is not at all likely to
become a regular English word, and perhaps will not even remain as
slang after the war.
Besides the fact that slang often becomes good English, we have to
notice that good English often becomes slang. One of the most common
forms of slang is to use words, and especially adjectives, which mean
a great deal in themselves to describe quite small and ordinary
things. To speak of a "splendid" or "magnificent" breakfast, for
instance, is to use words out of proportion to the subject, though of
course they are excellent words in themselves; but this is a mild form
of slang.
There are many people now who fill their conversation with
superlatives, although they speak of the most commonplace things. A
theatrical performance will be "perfectly heavenly," an actress
"perfectly divine." Apart from the fact that nothing and no one merely
human can be "divine," divinity itself is perfection, and it is
therefore not only unnecessary but actually incorrect to add
"perfectly." A scene or landscape may very properly be described as
"enchanting," but when the adjective is applied too easily it is a
case of good English becoming slang.
Then, besides the use of superlative adjectives to describe things
which do not deserve such descriptions, there is a crowd of rarer
words used in a special sense to praise things.
Every one knows what a "stunning blow" is, but few people can ever
have been stunned by the beauty of another's clothes. Yet the
expression "stunning hat" or "stunning tie" is quite common.
Expressions like a "ripping time" are even more objectionable, because
they are even more meaningless.
Then, besides the slang use of terms of praise, there are also many
superlatives expressing disgust which the slangmongers use instead of
ordinary mild expressions of displeasure. To such people it is not
simply "annoying" to have to wait for a lift on the underground
railways; for them it is "perfectly sickening."
_Horrid_, a word which means so much if used properly, is applied to
all sorts of slightly unpleasant things and people. When one thinks of
the literal Latin meaning of this word ("so dreadful as to cause us to
shudder"), the foolishness of using it so lightly is plain. People
frequently now declare that they have a "shocking cold"--a
description which, again, is too violent for the subject.
Another form of slang is to combine a word which generally expresses
unpleasant with one which expresses pleasant ideas. So we get such
expressions as "awfully nice" and "frightfully pleased," which are
actually contradictions in terms.
This kind of slang is the worst kind of all. It soon loses any spice
of novelty. It is not really expressive, like some of the quaint terms
of school or university slang, and it does a great deal of harm by
tending to spoil the full force of some of our best and finest words.
It is very difficult to avoid the use of slang if one is constantly
hearing it, but, at any rate, any one who feels the beauty of language
must soon be disgusted by this particular kind of slang.