attitude of professional men of letters in respect to the so-called
corruptions that have been creeping into English during the last few
centuries. It may be worth while to give some of the utterances of
our representative English authors on this subject, showing how great
solicitude they felt for the purity of our language in consequence of
the increasing slang introduced into English. But before doing this,
let us make a brief digression, in order to discuss what is meant by
slang, which appears to be the source of the alleged corruptions of our
speech.
In the first place one must differentiate slang from cant. It is
evident, on a careful analysis, that much of the reputed slang now
current is really cant, not slang, in the proper sense of the term.
Both cant and slang are closely allied and have a kindred origin. This
is the reason for the confusion of the two in the popular mind.
Cant is the language of a certain class or sect of people. It is the
phraseology, the dialect, so to say, of a certain craft or profession
and is not readily understood save by the members of the craft
concerned. It may be perfectly correct according to the rules of
grammar, but it is not perfectly intelligible and is not understood
by the people. It is an esoteric language which only the initiated
fully comprehend and are familiar with. For example, the jargon of
thieves is called cant, as is also the jargon of professional gamblers.
Slang, on the other hand, belongs to no particular class. It is a
collection of words and phrases, borrowed from whatever source, which
everybody is acquainted with and readily understands. It is not uncouth
gibberish intelligible only to a few. It is composed of colloquialisms
everywhere current, but homely and not refined enough to be admitted
into polite speech. Such expressions may be allowed a place in certain
departments of literature, as familiar and humorous writing, but they
are objectionable in grave and serious composition and speech.
Now, slang is reputed to have had its origin in cant, specifically
“thieves’ Latin,” as the cant of this vagabond class is called. Indeed,
this appears to have been the only meaning of slang till probably the
second quarter of the last century. In “Red Gauntlet,” published in
1824, Scott refers to certain cant words and “thieves’ Latin called
slang”; and the great romancer seems to have been fully aware that
he was using a rather unknown term which required a gloss. Sometime
during the middle of the last century, so Professor Brander Matthews
informs us, slang lost this narrow limitation and came to signify a
word or phrase used with a meaning not recognized in polite letters,
either because it had just been invented or because it had passed out
of memory. If it is true that slang had its beginning in the _argot_
of thieves, it soon lost all association with its vulgar source, and
polite slang to-day bears hardly a remote suggestion of the lingo of
this disreputable class. In so short a period--but little more than
a half century--has the word, as well as the thing it signifies,
separated itself from its unsavory early association and worked its way
up into good society.
Of slang, however, there are several kinds. There is a slang attached
to certain different professions and classes of society, such as
college slang, political slang and racing slang. But it must be borne
in mind that this differentiation has reference to the origin of the
slang in the cant of these respective professions. It is of the nature
of slang to circulate more or less freely among all classes of society.
Yet there are several kinds of slang corresponding to the several
classes of society, such as vulgar and polite, to mention only two
general classes. Now, it is true of all slang, as a rule, that it is
the result of an effort to express an idea in a more vigorous, piquant
and terse manner than standard usage ordinarily admits. In proof of
this it will suffice to cite _awfully_ for _very_, employed by every
school-girl as “awfully cute”; _peach_ or _daisy_ for something or
some one especially attractive or admirable, as “she’s a peach”; _a
walk-over_ for any easy victory, _a dead cinch_ for a surety, and
the like. But it is not necessary to multiply examples of a mode of
expression which is perfectly familiar to all. Every man’s vocabulary
contains slang terms and phrases, some more than others. Often the
slang consists of words in good social standing which are arbitrarily
misapplied. For although much current slang is of vulgar origin and
bears upon its face the bend sinister of its vulgarity, still some of
it is of good birth and is held in repute by writers and speakers even
who are punctilious as to their English. Some slang expressions are
of the nature of metaphors, and are highly figurative. Such are _to
kick the bucket_, _to pass in your checks_, _to hold up_, _to pull the
wool over your eyes_, _to talk through your hat_, _to fire out_, _to
go back on_, _to make yourself solid with_, _to have a jag on_, _to
be loaded_, _to freeze on to_, _to freeze out_, _to bark up the wrong
tree_, _don’t monkey with the buzz-saw_, and _in the soup_. But of the
different kinds of slang and of its vivid and picturesque character
more anon.
Let us now, after this digression as to what constitutes slang, return
to the former question of the historical aspect of slang, which
was engaging our consideration. Though the name is modern, slang
itself is, in reality, of venerable age, and was recognized in the
plebeian speech of Petronius, the Beau Brummel of Nero’s time, whose
“Trimalchio’s Dinner” is replete with the choicest slang of the Roman
“smart set.” The humorous pages of François Rabelais, also, have a
copious sprinkling of slang expressions and invite comparison with the
productions of some of our own American humorists, who depend not a
little upon the vigorous western slang to enhance the effectiveness of
their humor. But it is more to the point to cite historical instances
among our English authors, especially those who set themselves the
burdensome, yet thankless, task of striving to preserve the primitive
purity of our speech.
The greatest representative of this number in English literature,
excepting Addison, is Swift, the famous dean of St. Patrick’s. He was
impelled by a desire amounting almost to a passion, it is said, to hand
down the English language to his successors with its vaunted purity and
beauty absolutely unimpaired. In an essay in _The Tattler_ of September
28, 1710, he gives vehement utterance to his feelings on the shocking
carelessness and woeful lack of taste in the use of the vernacular
exhibited by his contemporaries. He affirms that the conscienceless,
unrefined writers of his day were utterly indifferent as to the effect
of their deplorable practice upon the future of the English tongue
and brought forward, in proof of his contention, numerous examples of
solecisms which he alleged were constantly employed, to the corruption
and deterioration of the language.
Swift made a threefold division of the barbarous neologisms which
were introduced in his day. It is interesting to observe his several
classes of these locutions that were contrary to all rules of
propriety. The first class was made up of abbreviations in which only
the first syllable or part of the word had to do duty for the entire
word, as _phiz_ for _physiognomy_, _hyp_ for _hypochondria_, _mob_
for _mobile vulgus_, _poz_ for _positive_, _rep_ for _reputation_,
_incog_ for _incognito_ and _plenipo_ for _plenipotentiary_. The second
class included polysyllables, such as _speculations_, _battalions_,
_ambassadors_, _palisadoes_, _operations_, _communications_,
_preliminaries_, _circumvallations_ and other ungraceful, mouth-filling
words, which Swift alleged were introduced into the language as a
result of the war of the Spanish succession then in progress. His
third class embraced those terms which were, to quote his own words,
“invented by certain pretty fellows, such as _banter_, _bamboozle_,
_country put_ and _kidney_.” “I have done my utmost,” he pathetically
remarks, “for some years past to stop the progress of _mob_ and
_banter_, but have been plainly borne down by numbers and betrayed by
those who promised to assist me.”
Two years later Swift addressed a public letter to the Earl of Oxford,
the Lord High Treasurer, deprecating the approaching decadence of the
English tongue and earnestly urging some sort of concerted action for
correcting and improving the vernacular. The language, the letter
recited, was very imperfect and daily deteriorating. The period of its
greatest purity, Swift went on to say, was that from the beginning
of Queen Elizabeth’s reign to the breaking out of the civil war of
1642. His perturbed mind was filled with mingled feelings of grief and
indignation as he pointed out in this letter the growing corruptions
then so apparent even in the writings of the best authors, and more
especially as he was compelled to admit that not only the fanatics of
the commonwealth, but also the court itself, had contributed to bring
about the sad condition of the language.
It is not worth while to speak in detail of Swift’s fanciful and
quixotic scheme for purging the language and keeping it pure. But it is
interesting to observe, in passing, that his urgent appeal to the prime
minister to become the guardian and curator of the English tongue was
utterly fruitless and, what is more, that his direful predictions as to
the speedy decay of English have never been verified. Furthermore, some
of those very neologisms which Swift criticized so unrelentingly are
now recognized in polite speech and bear the stamp of approval as the
_jus et norma loquendi_. Of his second class of barbarisms well-nigh
all are to-day accepted as standard English and are without a trace of
slang. With his first and third classes, however, fate has not dealt
so kindly, for these words are still under condemnation, save _mob_,
which has forced its way to recognition in good usage as a necessary
term.
Toward the end of the eighteenth century appeared another champion of
the preservation of the purity and propriety of the English speech.
This was James Beattie, a learned Scotchman. For some reason or other,
the Scotch seemed extremely solicitous about the English language
during the eighteenth century--a solicitude that was not appreciated by
the British lexicographers and least of all by Dr. Johnson. In a letter
written in 1790, Beattie took occasion to speak of the “new-fangled
phrases and barbarous idioms that are now so much affected by those who
form their style from political pamphlets and those pretended speeches
in Parliament that appear in the newspapers.” “Should this jargon
continue to gain ground among us,” he assures his correspondent, in
a doleful mood, “English literature will go to ruin. During the last
twenty years, especially since the breaking out of the American war, it
has made alarming progress.... If I live to execute what I purpose on
the writings and genius of Addison, I shall at least enter my protest
against the practise; and by exhibiting a copious specimen of the new
phraseology, endeavor to make my reader set his heart against it.”
In order to emphasize the damage resulting to the language from the
neologisms which were creeping in, Beattie conceived the clever plan of
privately printing a series of “Dialogues of the Dead,” which purported
to be the production of his son deceased a few years before. The
most interesting of these “Dialogues” is the report of an imaginary
conversation between Dean Swift, a bookseller and Mercury, in which
the worthy dean expresses himself as greatly shocked and disgusted
at the outlandish English used by the bookseller; and he calls on
Mercury to translate the _patois_ into good English. In response to
Swift’s earnest request, Mercury says among other things: “Instead
of _life_, _new_, _wish for_, _take_, _plunge_, etc., you must say
_existence_, _novel_, _desiderate_, _capture_, _ingurgitate_, etc.,
as--a fever put an end to his existence.... Instead of a _new_ fashion,
you will do well to say a _novel_ fashion.... You must on no account
speak of _taking_ the enemy’s ships, towns, guns or baggage: it must
be _capturing_.” Other words which were censured as improper by this
phantom critic were _unfriendly_ and _hostile_ for which _inimical_ was
recommended; _sort_ and _kind_, in place of each of which _description_
was to be used. Some of the locutions then in vogue which especially
offended good taste, according to Beattie, were _to make up one’s
mind_, _to scout the idea_, _to go to prove_, _line of conduct_, _in
contemplation_, and _for the future_. Furthermore, the frequent use
of _feel_, which threatened to supplant the verb _to be_ in such an
idiom as “I am sick” and drive it from its rightful domain, aroused the
learned Scotch purist’s apprehension as to the final outcome, as did
also the growing tendency to employ _truism_ for _truth_, _committal_
for _commitment_, _pugilist_ for _boxer_, _approval_ for _approbation_
and _agriculturist_ for _husbandman_.
No doubt Beattie believed with Swift that the influx of such
pedantic Latinisms as _desiderate_ and _ingurgitate_ and the like
would result in impairing the purity of our speech and perhaps hasten
its declension. Nor did he look with favor on the growing fashion
to use monosyllables, though of pure Saxon origin, so much affected
by some writers during that period. Both of these tendencies were
of temporary vogue; yet they served to arouse the fears of the
ultra-conservatives as to the fate of the English language. One might
suppose that, dreading the then threatening invasion of Latin terms
as they clearly did, they would have hailed with delight the revival
of Saxon monosyllables as a favorable offset. But even this did not
allay their fears and was rather interpreted as a harmful symptom.
Time, however, has demonstrated fully that the fears of those purists
were unwarranted and that their dire predictions as to the future
of English were founded on a very imperfect knowledge of linguistic
development. A cursory examination of Beattie’s lists reveals the fact
that of the verbal innovations and offending phrases which he put under
the ban, the genius of the language has adopted not a few, and that,
too, without impairing in the least the purity of the English tongue
or its capacity for expressing the finest shades of thought. So far
from losing, the language has gained in its capacity for expressing
nice distinctions of thought and feeling, as a result of its marvelous
absorptive power.
It has thus been shown that in the eighteenth century there were not
wanting those--purists or what not--who entertained and expressed
no little concern as to the ultimate effect upon our speech of
the multitude of neologisms and asserted improprieties that were
introduced. Did space permit, utterances of a similar character by
nineteenth-century writers, from Walter Savage Landon down to critics
of far less renown, might be brought forward as evidence to show that
the watch-dogs of our speech were as numerous and as alert as ever. Nor
is their tribe yet extinct. Ever and anon, even in the last few years,
some prophet of evil is heard to raise his voice in vigorous protest
against the increasing use of slang as foreboding the decadence of our
vernacular. But the warning is not heeded; and the English language,
like the real living thing that it is, goes on developing according to
the subtle principles of speech development.
The laws governing speech development are very imperfectly known.
Consequently none can foretell how a given tongue may develop. The
language appears to be independent of one’s individual habit of
speech; yet it is the sum total of the individual habits of speech
that constitutes the language. No man makes a language; no man can
make it. Not even the greatest monarch on earth can, by decree or
fiat, predetermine the course of development of the language of his
subjects. Language is an involuntary product and does not result from
any determined concert of action. Yet it is modified and changed by
various influences. As long as it is alive and spoken, it is constantly
changing and will not remain “fixed” according to the whimsical desire
of the purist. When it ceases to be used upon the lips of the people as
a medium of communication of their thoughts and feelings, then it will
cease to change and grow and will become “fixed.” But when a language
is no longer spoken, it is characterized as dead. It is in this sense
that we call Latin and Greek dead languages, although they survive in
modern Italian and modern Greek, respectively.
It follows, therefore, that it is the height of folly for any one,
no matter how highly esteemed as an author, to attempt the rôle of
reformer of the speech. Such an one is destined to have only his labor
for his pains. He can not directly purge the language of its neologisms
and improprieties of usage. These violations of standard usage which
offend good taste, strange as it may seem, furnish indubitable evidence
of the vitality of the speech; for from these contraband expressions
come the new terms and idioms which are to take the place of the
obsolete words which drop out of the vocabulary.
Viewed in this light, slang assumes a different aspect, and it
becomes evident that it performs a certain necessary function in the
development of language. It is no longer proper, therefore, to refer to
slang with supreme contempt and to condemn it offhand as an unmitigated
evil which ought to be forthwith extirpated from the language. For, as
an eminent authority has observed, slang is the recruiting ground of
language and is, in reality, idiom in the making. It has been pointed
out how some of the slang expressions of the eighteenth century which
fell under the censure of Swift and Beattie are now found upon the
pages of our best authors and are heard upon the lips of our most
polished and elegant speakers. Since this is true, no verbal critic can
at the present time affirm of a polite slang expression now in vogue
that it is destined never to work its way up into good usage, or of a
foreign locution that it will never be domiciled in our speech. Nor can
he determine, in the case of a new coinage which is a candidate for
adoption into the literary language, just when it is taken over from
that doubtful borderland between slang and standard usage.
Seeing, then, that slang really has a function to perform in the growth
of speech and, therefore, that it is worthy of serious consideration,
let us examine some of our modern English slang and study for a short
while its origin and history.
Professor Brander Matthews, in an admirable paper on the subject,
divides slang into four classes, and we can hardly do better than to
follow his general classification. The first class embraces those
vulgar cant expressions which are the survivals of thieves’ Latin or
St. Giles’ Greek, and those uncouth, inelegant terms which constitute
the vernacular of the lower orders of society. This is the kind of
slang heard in the police courts, the kind the newspaper reporter
too frequently resorts to, in order to give spice to his account. It
has been introduced into literature by some of our recent novelists,
notably Dickens. The second class of slang is not quite so coarse,
and includes those ephemeral phrases and catchwords which have a
fleeting popularity and which, because they meet no real need, are soon
forgotten utterly. They live but a day and pass away, leaving behind
no trace of their existence. Of this class are campaign slogans and
such inane expressions as _where did you get that hat?_ _chestnut_,
_rot_, _I should smile_ and many others equally stupid. It is these two
classes of slang that have brought the term into disrepute and merited
contempt. For this sort of slang is very offensive to delicate ears and
justly deserves the speedy oblivion which overtakes it.
The other two classes of slang, on the contrary, are of a finer
type and have a reason for their being, something to commend them
to popular favor. It may well be that from this type new idioms and
phrases are recruited into our literary language. However, a certain
stigma attaches to this better variety of slang, also, in the judgment
of many, simply because it is slang. Yet it is heard on the lips of
educated and cultured speakers, much to the disgust of those who
are fastidious as to the propriety of usage. When it is employed in
the written speech, the more careful writers brand it with inverted
commas, the barbarian earmarks which attest its social inferiority.
Occasionally a bold writer like Mr. Howells breaks down these barriers
which convention has set up and gives a polite slang expression the
stamp of his approval and authority. In this way these social outcasts,
the pariahs of our literary speech, are now and then elevated to the
dignity and rank of good society, and finally establish themselves in
standard English.
Of these two classes of slang serving some useful end as feeders to the
vocabulary and idiom of our language by which its wasting energy is to
be repaired, the first embraces those archaic phrases and terms which
are revived after long disuse and again brought into service. Restored
after several generations of neglect, they now appear to be entirely
new coinages and are only received as other probationers. The second
class is composed of absolutely new words and expressions, frequently
the product of a happy invention and, generally, racy and forceful. As
instances of the first class may be mentioned _to fire_, in the sense
to expel forcibly or dismiss, _bloody_ in the sense of very, _deck_ in
the sense _pack_ of cards and similar historic Elizabethan revivals.
Such locutions have a good literary pedigree, now and then boasting the
authority of Shakespearean usage. But this is not always apparent and
such long-obsolete phrases are, therefore, accounted mere _parvenus_.
For example, in King Henry VI. we read:
Whiles he thought to steal the single ten,
The king was slily fingered from the deck.--3 Pr.,v.1.
and again in Shakespeare’s 144th sonnet:
Till my good angel fire my bad one out.
The vulgar _bloody_, more common in England than in America, is an
inheritance from the classic age of Dryden, who even uses the coarse
phrase “bloody drunk” in his Prologue to “Southerne’s Disappointment.”
Swift furnishes a slight variation from this in “bloody sick,”
occurring in his “Poisoning of Curll.” The more fruitful province of
polite slang is the second class, which is made up of the clever
productions of the present age. It is from the best of these coinages,
above all, that the worn-out energies of our vocabulary and idiom are
repaired. These raw recruits of slang are severely disciplined and
tested by hard preliminary service. If in this test an individual slang
expression proves useful and is seen to fill an actual need, it is
admitted eventually into the fellowship of standard English. But if, on
the other hand, its utility is not established, it is relegated to the
limbo of useless inventions where oblivion soon engulfs it.