Slang — Chambers's Encyclopaedia

Slang, a term in regard to the usual meaning of which the best authorities differ widely. It is defined by Webster as 'low, vulgar, unauthorised language;' by Skeat as 'low, vulgar language or a colloquial and familiar mode of expression;' by the Globe Encyclopædia as 'the secret jargon of thieves and vagabonds, otherwise known as Cant or Flash;' and by Wedgwood as 'to give bad words, to make insulting allusions.' But any large collection of words universally recognised as slang embraces not only vulgar, abusive, familiar, and classically unrecognised terms, as well as those of peculiar jargons or dialects, such as Gypsy, Canting or Flash, Back-slant, and Shelta or Tinkers' Talk, but also a vast number characteristic of trades, pursuits, and positions in every class of society; so that we may agree with Professor A. Barrère, that perhaps the best general definition at which one can arrive is that 'Slang is a conventional tongue with many dialects, which are, as a rule, unintelligible to outsiders.' This confusion of definitions appears to be due to the fact that the word is derived from two sources, each with a separate meaning. According to the generally received popular tradition, which is supported by the Gypsies themselves, and recognised as such by J. C. Hotten (Slang Dictionary, 1885), Slang is a Romany or Gypsy word. It was originally applied to everything relating to theatres or shows—in Hindustani Swangi, also, often, slangi. The peculiar jargon or tongue spoken among such show-people, also stage or theatrical language itself, doubtless gave rise to 'slang.' It is also applied as a means of expression by these people to 'licenses to exhibit,' while to be 'on the slang' signifies in circus-dialect to be in any way connected with 'the profession.' Slang in this sense means therefore a peculiar or secret language. But as a term of abuse, as in 'slanging' or 'slang-whanging' a man, Skeat properly derives it from the Norwegian sleng, a 'slinging or throwing;' hence slengja kjeften, 'to sling the jaw;' slengjeord, a 'slang or abusive word.' Thieves' slang, or a jargon deliberately intended to protect criminals, is known in India as bhat, hence the Gypsy pat, or patter, erroneously derived by mere conjecture from paternoster. In its extended sense it is difficult to draw the line between technical terms—as for instance those used on the turf or in sport—and slang, especially when equivalents for them are wanting in correct English. Any kind of shibboleth used to distinguish a class, be it of students, clergymen, authors, or the most fashionable circles, is correctly called slang, and is recognised as such in the best and last works on the subject.

The chief elements of all slang consist first of absolutely foreign words, including those manufactured; as when a costermonger says 'molty kerteever,' from the Ital. molto cattivo, for 'very bad,' or a street-vagabond uses the Romany lelled ('taken'), for 'arrested.' The other is the substitution of English words for equivalents, as when we hear 'brass' for impudence, 'timbers' and 'pins' for legs, 'claret' for blood, and 'tile' for a hat. Thus it is often in a rough form simile or poetry; 'brass' being indeed of classical origin as applied to the hardness which defies attack. 'A certain proportion of slang words after performing, as it were, quarantine, receive a clean bill of health, and are admitted to that great port the dictionary.' Some even make a reappearance in good language. Thus humbug, which meant originally a night-terror or delusion (Hum, 'tenebræ,'

Icelandic, and Bug, 'a being which terrifies'), was long treated as pure slang, but is now generally used even by the most correct writers in its new meaning. Very little slang in the vulgar or common sense is to be found in Greek or Latin (though Aristophanes and Martial often approach it), or in any European language until the middle ages. François Villon (15th century) wrote ballads in an argô which was by far the most copious and perfected in Europe; a century later Martin Luther compiled a dictionary of Rotwälsch (wälsch, 'foreign' or 'Italian'; rot being either from roth, 'red,' or rotte, 'a gang'), used by the thieves of his time, in which half the words are Hebrew, derived from the receivers of stolen goods and their Yiddish dialect. In Italy there was at the same time a lingua furbesche, of which a vocabulary has been published; and in Spain the Tunanesesca which was largely mixed with Spanish Gypsy, itself a very much corrupted Romany. English Canting, or the language of the dangerous and vagabond classes, which in a great measure preceded all other forms of slang, did not before the end of the 15th century embrace more than 150 or 200 words. But as C. J. R. Turner has suggested, it was the arrival of the Gypsies in England about 1505, speaking by themselves a perfect language, which stimulated the English nomads to improve their own scanty jargon. According to Samuel Rowlande (1610), a man named Cock Lorell, who was the head of all the strollers or thieves in England, observing that the Gypsies were a strong race, proposed union with them, the result being a congress, 'at which a language, or rather language, was deliberately constructed and adopted' (Leland). 'First of all they think it fit to devise a certaine kinde of Language to the End that their censurings, knaueries, and villainies might not be so easily perceived' (Rowlande). The Gypsies, true to their nature, cheated the English vagabonds by teaching them very little of their own Indian tongue. Harman, a magistrate who in 1567 first published a vocabulary of Slang or Canting, declares explicitly that it was only within thirty years of his time of writing that the dangerous classes had begun in England to use a separate language at all.

The Gypsy language, or Romany, has been greatly misunderstood. It is really an Indian tongue, a dialect of Urdu, or Hindustani, but very ancient. A number of writers, such as Grose, the author of the Life of B. M. Carew, and others, have, misled by Rowlande, published vocabularies of canting as 'Gypsy.' Romany is, however, the corner-stone of English slang. It has constantly contributed new words to the latter—e.g. tanner, 'a sixpence,' not from tāno, 'small,' as Borrow declares, but from the Hindu taino, 'a coin;' and bosh, 'mere noise, nonsense.' A second element is the Celtic, which has come chiefly not so much from any of the leading dialects, such as Irish, Gaelic, or Welsh, as from Shelta, a language first discovered by the present writer in 1876, and which has since been identified by Kuno Meyer and Sampson with the artificial—or lost—language of the Irish bards. It is still generally spoken by tinkers, and is common even in London. From it we have mizzle, meaning 'to go,' or 'to rain' (mislain). The writer once met in the street in London two small English boys, who spoke fluently both Romany and Shelta. Shakespeare, it should be noted, makes Prince Hal speak of a tinker's language. Yiddish (Ger. Jüdisch, 'Jewish') is a strange compound of very corrupt Hebrew and ancient or provincial German, spoken by the commoner Jews. About a century ago a few words from it, such as toff, 'good,' began to creep into our slang. It is extensively spoken in the East End of London, and is constantly contributing new words to our popular phraseology. It is in Germany a language of some importance, as the 'Yiddish Chrestomathy' (Leip. 1882) of Max Grünbaum proves, and there are in all about twelve vocabularies of it. There were at one time two newspapers in London alone published in Yiddish. Hotten was the first to show and illustrate the curious fact that among street-musicians and costermongers a very corrupt and singular form of Anglo-Italian had become current. Still more strangely, it has come to be considered by tramps as the lowest and most vulgar means of expression. The keeper of a tramps' lodging-house after hearing a Cambridge professor speak Gypsy and Tinkers' Slang made no remark, but hearing him speak Italian said, 'Well, I'd never a-supposed you'd been down as low as that.' It occasionally happens that a word in the former corresponds exactly to a Gypsy term—e.g. bosh, 'a noise,' 'a nonsense,' pani, 'water,' chor, 'a thief.'

The Dutch language during the time of the Georges contributed a great many words, such as boefer, 'a buffer;' blink, 'to drink.' In America a still greater number was derived from this source (e.g. sleigh, from slê), which have since come over to England. Some confusion has resulted from the fact that owing to its great resemblance to other northern languages philologists have often thought they had discovered in English slang words of Saxon or Danish origin which were really Dutch, and often Dutch slang. There still remains much to be done as regards investigation in this field. About the beginning of the 19th century, when there was much attention paid to such subjects, and many 'fast' or fashionable men affected to be familiar with vulgar life, there sprang up, it is said, about Leadenhall in London, and bearing that name, that which was afterwards known as Back-slang. This consisted of words spelled backwards, such as top for pot, yennep for penny, nig for gin. It has been dying out rapidly of late years, but was at one time extensively spoken in Nodnol or London. Many traces of it are to be found in the gay novels and memoirs of the 'Thirties' and 'Forties.' Contemporary with it as regards time of origin is rhyming slang—i.e. the employment of a word which loses its own signification, taking that of another with which it rhymes. Thus Lord John Russell means bustle, a canting term meaning to pick pockets, also money. Romany or Gypsy, Shelta or Tinkers' Talk, Canting or Kennick, also known at one time as Flash or Thieves' Latin, and confused even by a modern Oxford professor with Gypsy, form the principal English slangs. All have their dialects or local differences. Thus, the Shelta heard in tramps' London lodging-houses is a very much corrupted form of that which is spoken in Scotland. Slang may consist of mere intonation or pronunciation: thus, Hotten gives the use of 'Gawd,' or 'Gorde,' for God, and similar errors by certain clergymen as pulpit slang. There are in America preachers who carry this to such an extent that they have almost formed a language of their own in this way; and a certain bishop was once declared to be in the habit of saying in the pulpit: 'He that hath yaws to yaw, let him yaw,' while in ordinary life he ejaculated plainly enough: 'He that hath cars to hear, let him hear!' Hotten also declares that the peculiar mispronunciation of certain names, especially in good society, such as Cooper for Cowper, Carey for Carew, Chumley for Cholmondeley, Sinjen for Saint John, is an anomaly which must correctly be regarded as fashionable slang. The misuse of certain French terms is also slang, which is, however, returned a hundredfold by the rather recent adoption and abuse of English words by Parisians, who, for example, believing that five o'clock means to drink tea, have formed the remarkable slang verb fiveocloquer, and even say Fiveocloquons-nous à quatre heures! Parliamentary, military, sporting, legal and literary, stage, showmen's, shopkeepers', and stock-exchange slang, and that of different callings or trades are all extremely interesting, since there is not one that has not many very old words, often of Norse or Celtic origin, which have not as yet been much investigated. By far the most prolific source of slang of late years has been the American. This has for a 'stem' obsolete English and provincial terms which have been retained chiefly in New England and the West, and which are really not slang, though so called. To these may be added words of German, Dutch, Canadian, French, Red Indian, Negro, and Spanish origin. But by far the most amusing part of Americanisms are the constantly improvised proverbs, sayings, and quaint allusions, eccentric oaths and condensed anecdotes, which, when thrown off in conversation, soon find their way into a newspaper.

The principal works on this subject are Harman's Caveat for Common Corsetors, vulgarly called Vagabones (1566); the Life of Bamfylde Moore Carew (no date), containing a vocabulary of Canting, miscalled Gypsy; Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785); Bacchus and Venus (1737), with a canting vocabulary, republished as the Scoundrels' Dictionary. (This dictionary is said to have appeared by itself in 1710 as A Dictionary of the Canting Crew.) The first work of any value on this subject in which slang was treated in its true sense was the Slang Dictionary of John Camden Hotten (1859). Its editor unfortunately had no knowledge of Romany, and the existence of Shelta or Tinkers' talk was not known to him. A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, and Cant, by Professor A. Barrère and Charles Godfrey Leland, contains Americanisms, Gypsy, Shelta, Pidgin English, Anglo-Indian, and other terms, with a history of English Slang (2 vols. Lond. 1885; new ed. 1897). Slang and its Analogues, by John Farmer (Lond. 1890 et seq.), contains synonyms in the principal modern languages. American slang: see the article AMERICANISMS; John R. Bartlett, Dictionary of Americanisms (New York, 1848, and Cambridge, Mass., 1877); J. S. Farmer, Americanisms, Old and New (privately printed; Lond. 1888); Americana, by Charles Godfrey Leland. Gypsy: see works of George Borrow, Lavengro, Romany Rye, &c., and Dialect of the English Gypsies, by Dr Bath Smart and Crofton (1863-88). See also the articles GYPSIES and SHELTA, with works there cited. Anglo-Indian: Sir Henry Yule and A. Brunell, Glossary of Anglo-Indian Colloquial Words and Phrases (1886). French Slang: Barrère, Argot and Slang (Lond. 1887); and the French works of Larchey (1880), Rigaud (1881), Delvau (1883), and Vitù (1890). German Slang: Avé Lallemand, Deutsches Gannerthum (1862); Genthe, Deutsches Slang (1892). Pidgin English: Pidgin English Ballads, with vocabulary of the Jargon, by Charles G. Leland (1886).