Lexicographer Jonathon Green selects the slang words and expressions that encapsulate the age in which they were coined.
I've been collecting slang and and publishing books about it
for 30 years. My database contains 125,000 words and phrases and they
keep coming.
One thing I've learnt - the more slang changes, to half-inch the well-known phrase, the more slang stays the same.
Politically correct, even polite: I fear not. But humanity at its most human, absolutely.
As examples I offer a selection of terms that display some of slang's nuts and bolts.
Booze
It was there in the first ever glossary of slang, the
collection of criminal jargon published c.1532, and it's still going
strong.
Booze: Alcohol, drink, and as a verb, to drink. It came from Dutch
buizen, to drink to excess (and beyond that
buise, a large drinking vessel) and the first examples were spelt
bouse. Over the centuries it spread its wings. We find the
boozer (both pub and person), the
booze artist, -
gob, -
head, -
freak,
-hound,-
hoister, -
rooster,
-shunter and -
stupe, all drunkards. There are the pubs, saloons and bars - the
booze barn,
-bazaar, -
casa, -
crib, -
joint, -
mill, -
parlour, -
factory, -
foundry and -
emporium. Across the
mahogany (the bar counter) stands the
booze clerk, -fencer or
-pusher. If we hit the booze too heavily, we get a
booze belly, and maybe a trip on the
booze bus, Australia's mobile breath-tester.
Diss
Run DMC: "Don't try to diss me"
Slang, being subversive to its very core, doesn't have much
time for rules but like all language it has to accept one - words are
always older than you think. Let's take
diss.
Meaning - disrespect. Origins - African-American, spread like so much of
that slang-filled language via the worldwide success of hip-hop and rap
music. Date - ever since the late 1980s. Except, with the exception of
the meaning, all that is wrong. Go back, search among the vast number of
online databases that are lexicography's gift from the internet. Look,
digitally, at the Sunday Times of Perth, Western Australia. Specifically
at 10 December 1906 and find: "When a journalistic rival tries to 'dis'
you / And to prejudice you in the public's eyes." The next example is
1981. The only question now - what about the examples in between?
Groovy
I had met slang earlier - you couldn't read writers such as
Sapper or PG Wodehouse and fail to note that not all language was
restrained to the standard - but I doubt if I really started thinking
"slang" till the 60s.
Groovy, heavy, bag (of which Papa had a brand new…),
uptight (and
outasite),
thing, cool, dope…
such were hippiedom's key words. That they came, unaltered, from an
American black vocabulary that was around 30 years old was irrelevant.
Ignorance, if not bliss, did not impede our use. Some were laid to rest;
others flourish.
Dope still means drugs, as well as affirming excellence.
Cool marches on, re-minted for every youthful generation. As for
groovy, it began life meaning conservative (
"stuck in a groove"); now the young use it to mock those who pose as latter-day
freaks.
Hipster
An original hipster...
The original
hipster wore Italian suits,
listened to Charlie Parker's brand of "cool" jazz, shot up heroin and
doubled as what Norman Mailer, in a famous essay of 1957, christened
"The White Negro". Mass-marketed, he was the idealised stud of Hugh
Hefner's "Playboy philosophy", at his incomparable best the
taboo-shattering stand-up Lenny Bruce. Something cooler and blacker than
the
beatnik, he was a cut above the
hippie,
which, pre-bells and beads, signified a failed or at best wannabe
hipster. He vanished around 1960. Now he's back (and she too) and the
Urban Dictionary describes "a subculture of men and women typically in
their 20s and 30s that value independent thinking, counter-culture,
progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity,
intelligence, and witty banter". Been there, dare I say, done that too.
... and two unoriginal ones
Not all there
Slang fails on caring, sharing and compassion but it does a
good insult. Modernity lacks the 18th Century's excellent "you are a
thief and a murderer: you have killed a baboon and stolen his face" but
there is much on offer. Slang, as noted, pooh-poohs political
correctness and has no time for euphemism, however justified, and while
mental-health professionals might deplore the fact, lists a wide range
of terms it defines as "mad". The over-riding image is "not all there".
Take your pick from:
A couple of chips short of an order, a butty, a happy meal or even
a circuit-board,
a few bob short of the pound, a few snags short of a barbie, one brick short of a load, one sandwich short of a picnic, one stop short of East Ham (yes, "barking") or
two wafers short of a communion.
Dosh
With "older than you think" still in mind, there's
dosh - money. Like many of slang terms for cash, the inference is "something you need", e.g.
the needful, bread, as in "the staff of life" or
quid,
from the Latin for "what", with "one needs" left unspoken. Dosh, which
started life around 1850, may come from a mix of "dollar" and "cash" but
the root lies more likely in
doss, a sleep, bed or lodging house, itself rooted in Latin's
dorsus, the back, on which one rests. Dosh was the money required to get that very basic necessity.
Bad=good
Slang, being what Americans would term a contrary
cuss,
is never happier than when rendering its topics and terminology
inside-out, upside down and generally turning all available arses
about-face. Never more so than with those alleged poles of morality,
good and bad. It is a vocabulary, after all, in which
do good means to make substantial profits from crime and
get good to become drunk. And
bad? Quite simply, in slang's looking-glass environs, bad means good. Albeit with a special sauce of sexiness and outsider cool.
It all starts with
rum. In cant,
the language of criminal beggars, rum meant good. The reason is lost,
though there may be links to Rome, both as a former imperial capital and
in
Romeville, cant for London. The image is of the great and powerful city epitomizing something desirable.
Continue reading the main story
About the author
Jonathon Green is a lexicographer of slang, and author of several books, the most recent of which are
Language! 500 Years of the Vulgar Tongue and
Odd Job Man: Some Confessions of a Slang Lexicographer
"Good" rum offered over 120 compounds. There was rum booze, which was good strong beer, there was a rum diver who was a competent pickpocket and a rum doxy who was a pretty girl. A rum kiddy was a smart young villain and rum nantz the best-quality brandy (from Nantes, whence it was exported). Then, around 1760, it all changes. We meet the rum cove, an odd or eccentric character, the rum phiz, a deformed face (phiz as in physiognomy), and of course the rum 'un, a dubious individual.
"Bad" rum's descendants start emerging in the early 19th
Century. There is terrible, nasty, awful, mean and hell. There is also,
though today's young might find this surprising,
wicked, which turns up in 1842. Then it promptly disappears and does not re-emerge until 1908, often describing food (a
"wicked ragout") or drink (a
"wicked punch"). One can also
shake a wicked foot. Exclamatory
wicked!
arrives in the 1970s (in the 50s musical Grease, though the "real"
fifties offer no examples) and really gets going - stand up, Jamie
Oliver - in the 90s.
Much is owed to hip-hop.
Ill appeared in 1987,
dank and
skanky (used elsewhere of drugs and floozies respectively) in 1989 and
ghetto in 1996. The new century has added
roughneck, beasty and
treacherous.
Whole nine yards
How long is that in metric?
Why do people read slang dictionaries? Not for the spelling,
nor the pronunciation. What they want is the etymologies - the stories
behind the words. Usually we can give them, although a surprising number
are simply playing with standard English. Thus
dog, with its compounds, offers 161 meanings in slang. But sometimes we can't. What, for instance lies behind the phrase
the whole
nine yards?
We know that it comes out of US regional use, and is so far first
recorded in 1907. But its origins? Most suggestions involve standards of
measurement, from the dimensions of a nun's habit to the capacity of a
cement truck and the length of an ammunition clip to that of a hangman's
rope. However, few, when checked, actually run to nine yards. It may be
no more than the use of nine as a form of mystic number. Your guess,
dare I admit, maybe be even better than mine.
Nang
Slang may stay the same but the lexis evolves. Standard
English laid down such terms as drunk or sexual intercourse centuries
ago. Slang, not so much a language (where's the grammar?) but rather a
vast compendium of synonyms, has respectively 3,000 and 1,750 terms for
each. That the former tend to suggest some form of physical ineptitude
and latter, sadly, too often boils down to "man hits woman", does not
mean there won't be more. But there are real novelties.
Nang,
meaning first-rate, is an example of slang's current cutting edge,
Multi-ethnic London English (MLE). This mix of Jamaican patois, American
hip-hop, Cockney classics and the coinages of youthful Londoners has
added much to slang's vocabulary. Nang, imported from the Caribbean
where it means ostentation or style and rooted in
Mende nyanga, showing off, is one of the better-known examples.
Yolo
Slang is ephemeral. So runs the critique. As
booze and thousands of other terms make clear, this is far from the rule. But yes, some things don't last.
Yolo -
you only live once - was the flavour of the month, even year, not that
long ago. Today few slang users worthy of their attitude would be heard
using it. It is far from alone. In 1840 Charles McKay, in his book
Memoirs of Extraordinary Popular Delusions, listed a number of defunct,
yet once hugely popular catchphrases. Among them -
has your mother sold her mangle? walker! quoz! flare up! and
there he goes with his eye out!
Each, as Mackay noted, was "the slang par excellence of the Londoners,
and afforded them a vast gratification". And now? All gone, not to
mention forgotten.
Jonathon Green is a lexicographer of slang, and author of several books, the most recent of which are Language! 500 Years of the Vulgar Tongue and Odd Job Man: Some Confessions of a Slang Lexicographer 
