Slang
Slang
Plan:
Chapter
I. Characteristic features of Slang…………….... 2
1.Feature
Articles: Magical Slang: Ritual, Language and Trench Slang of the Western
front…………………………………….2
2.Background
of Cockney English………………….……….13
Chapter
II. Slang and the Dictionary.…………......……... 17
1.What is slang?……………………………………………...17
2. Slang Lexicographers……………………..………………18
3. The Bloomsbury Dictionary Of
Contemporary slang…..…20
4. Slang at the Millennium…………………………………...22
5.Examples
of slang………………………………………….24
Conclusion……………………………………………….….35
Literature………………………………………………........38
Slang
Slangizms are a very interesting groups of words. One of the
characteristics of slangizm is that they are not included into Standard English
EG: mug = face; trap = mouth
Such words are based on metaphor, they make speech
unexpected, vivid and sometimes difficult to understand.
Slang appears as a language of a subgroup in a language
community. We can speak of black-americans’ slang, teenagers’ slang, navy and
army slang.
Feature Articles: Magical Slang: Ritual,
Language and Trench Slang of the Western Front
Unprecedented in its conditions, ferocity, and slaughter,
the First World War was also unprecedented in its effect on the psyches of the
men who fought and on the languages they spoke. Like the soldiers who
spoke it, English emerged from the war, as Samuel Hynes maintains, a
"damaged" language, "shorn of its high-rhetorical top..."
(1)
French linguistic purists, led by the Academie Francaise,
vigorously denounced damaging incursions of journalistic language and trench
slang into standard French. (2) Only in Germany did a nationalist
ideology with its high rhetoric of struggle, sacrifice, and military glory
survive, adopted and nourished first by rightist veterans' groups and
paramilitary formations, and finally institutionalised by the National
Socialists and their leader, former Frontsoldat Adolf Hitler.
But whatever damage the war may have wrought on the
"high" language is, in a sense, compensated by the emergence of two
new popular "languages" of great interest to the historian. One
is the language of popular journalism; already well-established in 1914, it was
characterised by its own chauvinistic diction and aggressively patriotic
attitude and was the means by which most civilians got information about the
war.
Universally excoriated by the fighting troops as bourrage de
crone (head stuffing, i.e. false stories) and Hurrah-patriotismus (hurrah
patriotism), journalistic prose nevertheless significantly shaped civilian
attitudes about the war and soldiers' attitudes about the press. (3)
French troops called the official war bulletin le petit menteur (the little
liar). The other language was, of course, what we call trench slang, the
common idiom of the front. The literate mass armies trapped in the
entrenched stalemate of the First World War provided a fertile medium for the
development and dissemination of the special language of the trenches. (4)
In this essay, I intend to focus on the two predominant
roles of slang in the context of the Western Front: its denotation of
membership in the community of combat soldiers, and its magical or talismanic
function as the protective language of that community and its individual
members. The selected examples are meant to be illustrative rather than
exhaustive.
Among the many rhetorical and social functions of slang and
jargon, that of defining and delimiting a social group by reinforcing its
social, professional and often visual identity with a verbal one is broadly
significant. (5)
Robert Chapman has noted that "an individual... resorts
to slang as a means of attesting membership in the group and of dividing
himself... off from the mainstream culture." (6)
Niceforo neatly pinpoints the genesis of slang: "sentir
differement, c'est parler diffJrement; - s'occuper differement, c'est aussi
parler differement" ("to feel differently is to speak differently; -
to occupy oneself differently is also to speak differently"). (7)
The creation of a verbal identity based on occupation and feeling is
particularly marked in military society, where social function, enforced
separation from the civilian world, and uniform appearance already distinguish
the members of a circumscribed, hierarchical society from outsiders.
It would be useful at this point to differentiate between
the terms "jargon" and "slang" in a military context, as
both exist, are sometimes commingled, and often confused. (8) By jargon I
mean the language of the profession, consisting primarily of technical terms
(including acronyms) proper to the military service, what Flexner calls
"shop-talk." (9) In current American military jargon, for
example, the acronym PCS, which stands for Permanent Change of Station, appears
occasionally as a noun, as in "Did you have a good PCS?" but more
frequently as a verbal structure, as in "He PCSed last month" or
"She's PCSing in January."
The "alphabet soup" of acronyms, an enduring
characteristic of military jargon, first appeared in bewildering array in the
First World War, although some had existed earlier. (10) Military jargon
is, of course, not limited to acronyms, but includes such things as
abbreviations for weapons and equipment, terms for promotion and failure,
punishments under the code and the like.
Genuine slang, on the other hand, generally eschews
technical terms in favour of the renaming of objects and actions, and the
invention of neologisms. Chapman remarks that slang relies heavily on
"figurative idiom... (and) inventive and poetic terms, especially
metaphors." (11) Partridge likewise signals the importance of
metaphor and figurative language of all sorts. (12)
Drawing again on current American usage, the gold oak leaves
on a field-grade army officer's hat become "scrambled eggs" and the
collective designation for senior officers is "brass hats" or simply
"the brass," a phrase which, along with many others from the two
world wars, has migrated into the general vocabulary. (13)
The hats of field-grade air force officers are decorated
with stylised clouds and bolts of lightning, universally dubbed "darts and
farts." Similarly a colonel, who wears eagles as his insignia, is
distinguished from a lieutenant colonel by being called an
"eagle-colonel," or with the fine pejorative edge present in
"scrambled eggs" and "darts and farts," a "chicken colonel."
To the disparagement implicit in such phrases, I shall shortly return.
The military proclivity for acronyms occasionally and
amusingly spills over into true slang. A famous instance is that Second
World War favourite "SNAFU," politely rendered as "situation
normal, all fouled up." A rudimentary knowledge of scatological
language will quickly provide the ruder and more popular version. (14)
In wartime, the general store of military slang is augmented
by a special subspecies - the slang of combat troops.
Such troops use the general slang but employ, in addition, a
vocabulary unique to their situation. The slang of combat troops
distances its users from the safe, punctilious (and by implication, cowardly)
rear echelons, while concomitantly reinforcing the separate identity and moral superiority
of the combat units. (15)
Anyone familiar with the literature of World War I will
immediately recall the pervasive "us vs. them" mentality of front and
rear and the suffocating smugness of staff officers. The front line
troops psychologically and linguistically occupied the moral high ground of
courage, suffering and sacrifice, leaving the rear to hold the low ground of
shirking and blind adherence to form and tradition at the cost of lives.
Franz Schauwecker wrote that there was a crack in the structure of the army
that "ran parallel to the front somewhere just outside the range of enemy
fire." (16)
Before examining the characteristic language of the trench
soldiers of World War I, let us briefly review the physical and psychological
stresses inherent in the static trench systems of the Western Front, and the
ways in which the troops coped with those pressures. In the forty years
of European peace that followed the Franco-Prussian war of 1870, the general
staffs of the armies analysed the campaigns, drew their conclusions, and
plotted their strategies for the rematch that most were convinced was
inevitable.
Unlikely as it may seem, the generals of victorious Germany
and defeated France arrived at the same conclusions: only total offensive - offensive
B l'outrance - could ensure victory. While the Germans planned the von
Schlieffen offensive, Revanche became the motive force behind French military
planning in the years between the wars. (17)
With all sides (including the British, despite their
experience in the Boer War) committed to the theory of the offensive, the
sudden concretion of the long-awaited war into defensive entrenchment baffled
even the generals. In their obsession with the offensive, and with its
psychological component of troop morale, they had failed to recognize that the
enormous technological advances in weaponry worked more to the benefit of
defence than of offence. The Western Front was shaped by artillery, the
machine gun, barbed wire, and the spade. As early as October of 1914, a
prescient young German officer wrote to a friend that
(t)he brisk, merry war to which we have all looked forward
for years has taken an unforeseen turn. Troops are murdered with machines,
horses have almost become superfluous... The most important people are the
engineers... the theories of decades are shown to be worthless. (18)
Unfortunately for the miserable troops mired in the wet,
cold, and filthy trenches, the generals refused to accept the deadly efficacy
of the defensive weapons, and spent the first three years of the war mounting
one costly frontal assault after another, until the abortive Nivelle offensive
of May 1917 precipitated the mutiny of the French army and ended what J.M.
Winter calls "the great slaughter." (19)
What, then, was the effect of trench warfare on the
soldiers? First, the experience of war was an initiatory one. That
is, the experience is, per se, so remarkable that no one who has not
experienced it can ever share it or understand it. (20)
For Aldington soldiers were "men segregated from the
world in this immense barbaric tumult." (21) "Ein Geschlecht
wie das unsere ist noch nie in die Arena der Erde geschritten," ("A
generation such as ours has never before stepped into the arena of the
earth") proclaimed Ernst Junger. (22)
This "initiate mentality" among combat troops was
immeasurably strengthened in World War I by the characteristics of the
fighting, the first of which was a tactical stasis that imposed physical
inertia on the front line troops. The soldiers were literally immobilised
in a maze of trenches, subjected to severe shelling and regular sniping, to say
nothing of the rigours of outdoor life in northern Europe, with virtually no
reliable protection from any of them. It is little wonder that the most
common metaphor for the trench system, and by extension the war itself, was the
labyrinth, a true "initiatory underground." (23)
It was not lost on German troops that the root word of der
Schhtzengraben (trench) was das Grab, a grave. In Otto Dix's lost painting,
Der Schhtzengraben, the trench becomes a grotesque grave filled with horribly
mutilated bodies.
The group identity of the "troglodytes" (to borrow
Fussell's term) emerges in the striking special language of trench slang.
In his preface to Dechelette's dictionary, Georges Lentre recounts hearing a
conversation between two soldiers that appeared to be mutually intelligible,
but which he found incomprehensible. (24)
Against the incomprehension of the rear and the patriotic
drivel of the press, the troops erected a linguistic wall that Jacques Meyer
perceptively calls "le language d'une franc-mahonnerie" ("a
language of free-masons"). (25)
The sense of identity and community is evident in what the
soldiers called themselves. The usual two-week stint in the front and
reserve lines tended to leave soldiers filthy, lousy, unshaven, and exhausted.
(26) For the Germans, a front line infantryman was a Frontschwein, a
front pig. For the French, he was a poilu, literally a hairy beast, as
the noun poil is used primarily for the hair of animals. Dauzat points
out that the term implies more than just an unshaven man, because the poilu is
hairy, as he delicately puts it, "au bon endroit," - a traditional
symbol of virility. (27)
In neither case is the animal reference pejorative.
Bill Mauldin's World War II cartoons of "GI Joe" stand in the same
tradition of affectionate commonality, all contempt reserved for those who are
not a part of the community of combat.
The sense of community felt by the combat troops (a bond
particularly marked among the Germans) was reinforced by the mass of war
material thrown against them.
The Germans, in fact, use the phrase "war of
material" (Materialschlacht) instead of "war of attrition" for
the 1916-1918 period.
Front line soldiers often felt that they had more in common
with the enemy soldiers in the trenches opposite than with their own rear
echelon troops and the people at home. That sense of a common bond of
suffering is reflected in the slang names for opposing and even allied
forces. With the exception of boche, and perhaps "Hun," to
which I shall return, epithets for opposing forces were generally based on a
stereotypical national name or characteristic or a deformed foreign phrase, and
were largely inoffensive.
On the German side, the favoured names for the French were
Franzmann and several names based on germanised French phrases: Parlewuhs
(parlez-vous), Wulewuhs (voulez-vous), Olala, and the very popular Tulemong
(tous le monde). (28) For British soldiers, the Germans, like the French,
used "Tommy," although naturally deforming the pronunciation.
English soldiers employed a variety of epithets for the
Germans. "Fritz" was popular early in the war, with
"Jerry" favoured later. According to Brophy, "Hun," a
journalistic creation, was used almost exclusively by officers, as was the
borrowed French "Boche."
Although the French used Fritz as well, Boche was the term
of choice. Its etymology is complex and uncertain, (29) but its
pejorative implications of obstinacy and generally uncivilised behaviour are
undeniable. The Germans loathed the word and considered it a profound
insult. Bergmann claimed that the Germans used no such derogatory terms,
for "wir Deutschen wissen uns zum Glhck frei von... kindischen Hass"
("we Germans know ourselves to be happily free from such childish
hatred"), but Dauzat disputes that. (30)
The unusually derogatory nature of Boche may reflect French
bitterness over the defeat of 1870 and the invasion of 1914. Dauzat
insists that Boche is a "mot de l'arripre" ("a word of the
rear"), and that the soldiers preferred Fritz, Pointu (for the pre-1916
German spiked helmets) or even Michel for artillerymen. (31)
Nevertheless, the other collective epithets suggest, in their general mildness,
that the front line troops considered enemy soldiers less dangerous than the
men to their rear.
Entrapment, immobility, and alienation led to what Leed has
called "the breakdown of the offensive personality." (32)
Instead of being a mobile offensive warrior, the soldier of trench warfare was
"humble, patient, enduring, an individual whose purpose was to survive a
war that was a 'dreadful resignation, a renunciation, a humiliation.'"
(33)
A young German soldier, Johannes Philippson, wrote home in
the summer of 1917 that "only genuine self-command is any use to me."
(34) French historian Marc Bloch described the feelings of his troops in
December 1914: "Trench warfare had become so slow, so dreary, so
debilitating to body and soul that even the least brave among us wholeheartedly
welcomed the prospect of an attack." (35)
How, then, could soldiers combat the soul-killing existence
in the trenches and the ever-present fear of death and wounds? One method
was through a reliance on talismans and rituals. As Fussell has noted
"no front-line soldier or officer was without his amulet and every tunic
pocket became a reliquary... so urgent was the need that no talisman was too
absurd." (36)
Luck also depended on ritual - on doing some things and
refraining from others, doing things in threes for example, or Graves'
conviction that his survival was due to the preservation of his virginity.
(37) Another form of talismanic protection was provided by the use of
slang. Niceforo defines "magical slang" ("l'argot magique")
as the language used by individuals when they fear (for reasons having a
magical basis) to call things and people by their real names. (38)
Slang allowed the troops to create a ritualised discourse,
fully intelligible only to the initiates, that suppressed fear by avoiding any
mention by name of death, wounds, weapons, and the authorities whose orders
could expose a soldier to those dangers. In short, the trench slang of
World War I served a protective function by creating a language that familiarised,
trivialised, and disparaged those objects and persons posing the greatest
danger to the individual soldier.
One of the most important taboos in the language of soldiers
was any mention of death. While the author of a novel or memoir may state
in a narrative capacity that someone was killed or wounded, such statements are
nearly non-existent in the dialogues of soldiers. Niceforo notes that the
taboo against mentioning death is very widespread, even in modern cultures.
(39)
The taboo is particularly strong when death is
omnipresent. A "Tommy" might say "He's gone west" or
"He's hopped it." The Germans simply said Er ist aus (He's
gone, done for). (40) A poilu remarked that his comrade had earned la croix
de bois, the wooden cross, probably an ironic formation on croix de
guerre. The important decorations for valour on all sides in the First
World War were in the shape of a cross, providing ample scope for metaphoric
formations.
As an interesting comment on the insignificance of medals to
common soldiers, German Frontsoldaten scathingly called all decorations
Zinnwaren, (tinware), while the French referred to them as batterie de cuisine
(cookware).
Wounds were handled in much the same way. British and
German troops had similar expressions for desirable wounds, just serious enough
to ensure that the wounded man would be evacuated home. For the British,
such a wound was a "Blighty," a term derived from a Hindu word
meaning a foreign country and taken up by British troops in India to refer to
Britain.
For the Germans, it was a Heimatschuss (a home shot), or an
Urlaubschuss (a leave shot), or even a Deutschlandschuss (a shot that gets one
to Germany). For the French, who were already on home ground, une fine
blessure, (the adjective weakens the gravity of the noun), nevertheless ensured
evacuation and convalescence far from the front.
The tendency to familiarise and trivialise is most apparent
in the names for weapons. In the age of the Materialschlacht, the
terrifying killing and maiming power of high explosives posed the greatest
threat to infantrymen on the Western Front, followed by rifle and machine-gun
fire. The distant impersonality of the killing (one scarcely ever saw the
enemy), and its unpredictability made it particularly threatening.
Trivializing names for weapons and their projectiles reduced
the psychological sense of danger. Bergmann notes that the tradition of
naming heavy guns reaches at least to the early seventeenth century. (41)
The soldiers of the Great War, faced with the most destructive technology then
known, were not behindhand. All the combatants referred to the various
artillery weapons by their calibres. Everyone spoke of "75s,"
the French 75 millimetre field gun, and "180s," the German heavy
howitzer.
German field guns of various calibres were variously dubbed
wilde Marie, dicke Marie, dicke Bertha (the famous "Big Bertha"), der
liebe Fritz, der lange Max, and schlanke Emma. (42) The manoeuvrability
of the French 75 was honoured in the name Feldhase (field hare). The
French called their 75 Julot, which seems to have been one of the few French
names in general circulation for heavy artillery pieces.
The French trench mortar, a squat, blunt-nosed gun with
angled supports, was called "le crapouillot," a word formed from
"crapaud" (toad), either from its shape or the fact that its shells
fired almost vertically and then dropped into the opposing trench line, much
like the hop of a toad. Bergmann has correctly assessed the effect of
naming guns for people (especially women) and animals: "...man sucht auch
auf diesem Wege sich die unheimlichen Kriegsmaschinen n@her zu bringen, sie
sich vertrauter zu machen und ihre Gefahr gleichsam geringer erscheinen zu
lassen" ("in this way one seeks to bring the sinister war machines closer,
to make them more familiar and, as it were, to let their danger appear
slighter"). (43)
The British seem to have been disinclined to name their
guns, but all three languages are richly furnished with names for the
projectiles, probably because ordinary infantrymen tended to be on the
receiving end. Because of the large quantity of black smoke produced by
the explosion, a heavy shell was called a "Jack Johnson", or a
"coal-box."
In French, a similar shell was un gros noir, and one that
exploded with greenish smoke was un pernod, named after the popular
drink. Others were saucissons (sausages), sacs B terre (sand bags) and
marmites, named after the large, deep cooking pot of the same name.
Germans called a heavy shell an Aschpott (ash pot) or a Marmeladeneimer (jam
pot). The British trivialised the German mine thrower - the Minnenwerfer
- by calling its whistling shells "singing Minnies," thus reducing a
dangerous weapon to the status of a harmless girl. (44)
Similarly, the German hand grenades, which had handles,
quickly became known as "potato mashers," which they did, indeed,
resemble. The oval hand grenades of France and Britain were called les
tortues (turtles) by the French and Ostereier (Easter eggs) by the
Germans. A German discus-shaped hand grenade was a Nhrnberger Lebkuchen,
the famous gingerbread Christmas cookie. In all of these cases, the
movement is to trivialise and familiarise the weapons by noting a resemblance
to something common, familiar, and above all, harmless.
The racial and sexual innuendo inherent in several of the
slang names (i.e. Jack Johnson, Big Bertha) is part of the same pattern and
reflects the attitudes of the period; it is not like the deliberately
derogatory and ironic slang used for the rear echelons, as we shall see.
The front line troops also displayed the greatest
inventiveness in their slang names for infantry weapons, colouring the
euphemism with an ironic twist. Take, for example, the machine gun, the
most dangerous infantry weapon. The Germans generally used the acronym MG
for Maschinengewehr, although Stottertante (stuttering aunt) and Nuhmaschine
(sewing machine) were current. (45) The British called their own machine
guns Lewis guns and the enemy's Maxim guns, named for their inventors.
But for the poilu, the machine gun became un moulin B cafe -
a coffee mill - first because the early gatling-gun types were hand-cranked,
and secondly for the sound they made. In any event, the gun was reduced
to being a familiar household object in everyday use. Later in the war
irony took over, and the machine gun was also called la machine B decoudre - a
machine to rip open seams, ironically formed on machine B coudre (sewing
machine). The verb decoudre also denotes the action of a horned animal
ripping open its attackers, giving the phrase a sinister undertone.
But the cleverest French slang involves the bayonet.
The French army had succumbed to a veritable cult of the bayonet in the period
before the war. It was regarded as the infantry weapon par excellence, the
embodiment of the offensive spirit, and the bayonet charge as the surest
indication of military elan among foot soldiers - the infantry equivalent of a
cavalry charge.
In the realities of trench combat, as Jean Norton Cru has
shown, the bayonet, despite its sinister appearance and exalted reputation, was
little used and produced minor wounds in comparison to the effects of shrapnel
and bullets. (46)
But it was a favourite for nicknames, the most famous of
which is Rosalie, from a 1914 song far more popular among civilians than among
soldiers. (47) The bayonet was known as la fourchette (the fork), and le
cure-dents (the toothpick), as well as a tire-Boche and a tourne-Boche.
In the last cases Boche, as the general slang term for the Germans, is
substituted into existing phrases.
The former comes from tire-bouchon, a corkscrew, possibly a
reference to the twisting movement that soldiers were taught to use in a
bayonet thrust. The latter, tourne-boche, is formed from tournebroche, a
kitchen spit for roasting meat and fowl in the fireplace.
One of the most striking characteristics of slang is its
inclination toward degradation rather than elevation, what Partridge following
Carnoy has called dysphemism. (48) Niceforo calls it "l'esprit
de degradation et de depreciation," ("the spirit of degradation and
depreciation") and goes on to speak of slang as a form of assault directed
at a higher class by an underclass. (49)
In its deliberate deformation of words, mispronunciation and
taste for impropriety, slang may serve as the only act of rebellion allowed
soldiers at war. While most mispronunciations of French place names were
probably just that, a few are so wonderfully ironic that they must have been
deliberate, such as the German deformation of Neufchatel to Neuschrapnell (new
shrapnel). (50)
Fear, and the hatred it spawned, was directed above all
toward the "powers that be," the perfidious and murderous ils (they)
as Meyer calls them. (51)
The combat soldiers' hatred of the rear, which certainly
involved some envy as well as a sense of moral superiority, rested also on a
sense of betrayal - the certainty that the powers, civilian or military, that
ordered their lives cared little for them. As we will see, slang terms
for rear echelon troops in French and German abound in animal and vegetal
metaphors, constituting a figurative vilification of intelligence, courage, and
manhood.
The conviction that their lives were not valued emerges in
numerous guises in the slang, including slang used for food, which was,
naturally, a major preoccupation of troops who were often badly fed. The
men exercised their traditional right to grumble about the food and create
disparaging epithets to describe it, a custom going back to the
"grognards" of the Napoleonic Wars and beyond, and certainly
continuing to our own time.
One of the staple rations in World War I was British canned
beef, called "Bully" beef by the troops. ("Bully" is
probably a corruption of the French bouillie, boiled). The Germans also
called it "Bully," and liked it so well that they rarely returned
from a trench raid without some, especially since German rations worsened as
the war lengthened and the allied blockade cut off German resources.
By 1916, the staple of the German soldier's diet was a mixture
of dried vegetables, mostly beans, that the Frontsoldaten called Drahtverhau
(barbed wire). Other German culinary delights included Stroh und Lehm
(straw and mud - yellow peas with sauerkraut), and Schrapnellsuppe (shrapnel
soup - undercooked pea or bean soup).
Jam, essential for softening stale bread, was Heldenbutter
(hero's butter), Wagenschmiere (axle grease), and
Kaiser-Wilhelm-Ged@chtnis-Schmiere (Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Spread). (52) Some
of these terms may refer specifically to the notorious turnip jam that became
standard issue after the blockade and crop failures created severe
shortages. Spread on ersatz bread made with sawdust and other fillers, it
was neither appetizing nor nourishing.
The French did not share their enemy's or ally's taste for
"Bully". They referred to it as singe, (monkey), and boTte B
grimaces, for the grimaces it produced. Other regular items in the French
soldier's diet included schrapnells (undercooked peas or beans), and lentils,
known as punaises (bugs).
They called a stew a rata, a shortened form of ratatouille,
which in its general sense refers to a stew, not merely the vegetable stew
which it designates in modern French. Rata however, also suggests the
verb ratatiner (to shrivel or dry up), which may be a remark on the quality of
army cooking.
The use of slang as insult, as defensive and offensive
weapon, reached its peak in the front line soldier's contempt for rear echelon
soldiers and for civilians. The universal distain for the staffs,
soldiers and officers alike, in their relatively safe and sheltered jobs,
surfaces in all three languages with vitriolic implications of cowardice,
greed, and self-seeking.
In the British army, staff officers were distinguished by
the wearing of bright red shoulder tabs and hat bands. The colour
constituted a visible symbol that the wearer did not belong to the colourless
khaki and field-grey world of the front, where distinguishing marks were
abolished because they made good targets for snipers. The frontline
troops soon dubbed the tabs "The Red Badge of Funk." (53) Along
this line, one of the trench newspapers provided the following definition of
"military terms":
DUDS
- These are of two kinds. A shell on impact
failing to explode is called a dud. They are unhappily
not as plentiful as the other kind, which often draws a
big salary and explodes for no reason. These are
plentiful away from the fighting areas. (54)
The implication of cowardice is less obvious in the French
and German terms for staff officers, but the scorn is deepened by the use of
animal references. In the German Frontschwein, used for the front
soldiers, Schwein was an expression of community and commonality, almost of
endearment.
But the equivalent term for headquarters soldiers,
Etappenschwein, was entirely pejorative. The German focus,
understandably, since the German troops were very ill-fed, was greed.
Rear echelon troops were often called Speck (bacon), and one writer even
referred to the Etappenschweine as "bellies on legs." (55)
The French slang is inventively pejorative. For them,
the headquarters sergeant was a chien de quartier, a headquarters dog.
The choice of animal is significant, as chien is a broadly-used pejorative in
French, common in such phrases as chien de temps (bad weather), chien de vie (a
dog's life) and Ltre chien (to be stingy).
The term in widest use for someone who had a safe job was
embusquJ, whose first meaning is someone lying in ambush. The word
consequently carries connotations both of hiding and, worse, of betrayal.
Another term, planquJ, has the original meaning of lying
flat, ie. safely out of the line of fire; a similar term is assiettes plates
(flat plates). The most insulting epithet is the opposite of poilu, JpilJ
(someone who has been depilitated), implying the loss of the vaunted courage
and virility of the poilu.
High ranking officers, invariably staff officers, since the
troops rarely saw anyone above the rank of captain, were reduced to lJgumes
(vegetables) and generals to grosses lJgumes (big vegetables). A
brigadier's stripes of rank were sardines, suggesting in French, as in English,
a small, smelly fish.
In conclusion then, the unique conditions of the First World
War (a war of defensive weapons led by generals obsessed with offensives)
engendered a level of psychological stress in the combatants hitherto unknown
in Europe. Along with talisman and ritual, the slang of the trenches
provided a stylised discourse for the initiates of the labyrinth, through which
they could define themselves as initiates, and simultaneously protect
themselves from the constant awareness of their horrific situation.
As John Brophy has said of Great War soldiers' songs, the
slang may not have diminished the soldier's danger, but it "may well have
reduced the emotional distress caused by fear, and aided him, after the
experience, to pick his uncertain way back to sanity again." (56)
Background of Cockney English:
Due to the fact that London is both the political capital
and the largest city within England, Wells, (1982b) doesn’t find it surprising
that it’s also the country’s "linguistic center of gravity." Cockney
represents the basilectal end of the London accent and can be considered the broadest
form of London local accent.(Wells 1982b) It traditionally refers only
to specific regions and speakers within the city. While many Londoners may
speak what is referred to as "popular London" (Wells 1982b) they do not necessarily speak
Cockney. The popular Londoner accent can be distinguished from Cockney in a
number of ways, and can also be found outside of the capital, unlike the true
Cockney accent.
The term Cockney refers to both the accent as well as to
those people who speak it? The etymology of Cockney has long been discussed and
disputed. One explanation is that "Cockney" literally means cock's
egg, a misshapen egg such as sometimes laid by young hens. It was originally
used when referring to a weak townsman, opposed to the tougher countryman and
by the 17th century the term, through banter, came to mean a Londoner
(Liberman, 1996). Today's natives of London, especially in its East End use the
term with respect and pride - `Cockney Pride'.)
Cockney is characterized by its own special vocabulary and
usage, and traditionally by its own development of "rhyming slang." Rhyming slang, is still part of the
true Cockney culture even if it is sometimes used for effect. More information
on the way it works can be found under the Cockney English features section.
Geography of Cockney English:
London, the capital of England, is situated on the River
Thames, approximately 50 miles north of the English Channel, in the south east
section of the country. It is generally agreed, that to be a true Cockney, a
person has to be born within hearing distance of the bells of St. Mary le Bow,
Cheapside, in the City of London. This traditional working-class accent of the
region is also associated with other suburbs in the eastern section of the city
such as the East End, Stepney, Hackney, Shoreditch Poplar and Bow.
Sociolinguistic issues of Cockney English:
The Cockney accent is generally considered one of the
broadest of the British accents and is heavily stimatized. It is considered to
epitomize the working class accents of Londoners and in its more diluted form,
of other areas. The area and its colorful characters and accents have often
become the foundation for British "soap operas" and other television
specials. Currently, the BBC is showing one of the most popular soaps set in
this region, "East Enders" and the characters’ accents and lives
within this television program provide wonderful opportunities for observers of
language and culture.
Features of Cockney English:
Some of the more characteristic features of the Cockney
accent include the following:
·
Monophthongization
This
affects the lexical set mouth vowel.
·
MOUTH
vowel
Wells (1982b) believes
that it is widely agreed that the "mouth" vowel is a "touchstone
for distinguishing between "true Cockney" and popular London"
and other more standard accents. Cockney usage would include monophthongization
of the word mouth
Example:
mouth =
mauf rather than
mouth
·
Glottal
stop
Wells (1982b)
describes the glottal stop as also particularly characteristic of Cockney and
can be manifested in different ways such as "t" glottalling in final
position. A 1970’s study of schoolchildren living in the East End found /p,t,k/
"almost invariably glottalized" in final position.
Examples:
cat = up = sock =
It can also manifest itself as a bare as the realization of word internal
intervocalic /t/
Examples:
Waterloo = Wa’erloo City = Ci’y A drink of water = A drin' a wa'er A little bit of bread with a bit
of butter on it = A li'le bi' of breab wiv a bi' of bu'er on i'.
As would be expected, an "Estuary English" speaker
uses fewer glottal stops for t or d than a "London" speaker, but more
than an RP speaker. However, there are some words where the omission of ‘t’ has
become very accepted.
Examples:
Gatwick = Ga’wick
Scotland = Sco'land
statement = Sta'emen
network = Ne’work
·
Dropped
‘h’ at beginning of words (Voiceless glottal fricative)
In the working-class ("common") accents throughout
England, ‘h’ dropping at the beginning of certain words is heard often, but
it’s certainly heard more in Cockney, and in accents closer to Cockney on the
continuum between that and RP. The usage is strongly stigmatized by teachers
and many other standard speakers.
Examples:
house = ‘ouse
hammer = ‘ammer
·
TH
fronting
Another very well known characteristic of Cockney is th
fronting which involves the replacement of the dental fricatives, and by labiodentals [f] and [v]
respectively.
Examples:
thin = fin
brother = bruvver
three = free
bath = barf
·
Vowel
lowering
Examples:
dinner = dinna
marrow= marra
·
Prosody
The voice quality of Cockney has been described as typically
involving "chest tone" rather than "head tone" and being
equated with "rough and harsh" sounds versus the velvety smoothness
of the Kensington or Mayfair accents spoken by those in other more upscale
areas of London.
·
Cockney
Rhyming Slang
Cockney English is also characterized by its own special
vocabulary and usage in the form of "cockney rhyming slang". The way
it works is that you take a pair of associated words where the second word
rhymes with the word you intend to say, then use the first word of the
associated pair to indicate the word you originally intended to say. Some
rhymes have been in use for years and are very well recognized, if not used,
among speakers of other accents.
Examples:
"apples and pears" – stairs
"plates of meat" – feet
There are others, however, that become established with the
changing culture.
Example:
"John Cleese" – cheese
"John Major" – pager
Numerous examples and usage of rhyming slang can be found
online. See Note 2 for
information.
Slang and the Dictionary
Slang ... an attempt of common humanity to escape from bald
literalism, and express itself illimitably ... the wholesome fermentation or
eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and
specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away, though occasionally to settle and
permanently crystallise.
Walt Whitman, 1885
What is slang?
Most of us think that we recognise slang when we hear
it or see it, but exactly how slang is defined and which terms should or should
not be listed under that heading continue to be the subject of debate in the
bar-room as much as in the classroom or university seminar. To arrive at a
working definition of slang the first edition of the Bloomsbury Dictionary of
Contemporary Slang approached the phenomenon from two slightly different
angles. Firstly, slang is a style category within the language which occupies
an extreme position on the spectrum of formality. Slang is at the end of the
line; it lies beyond mere informality or colloquialism, where language is
considered too racy, raffish, novel or unsavoury for use in conversation with
strangers … So slang enforces intimacy. It often performs an important social
function which is to include into or exclude from the intimate circle, using
forms of language through which speakers identify with or function within
social sub-groups, ranging from surfers, schoolchildren and yuppies, to
criminals, drinkers and fornicators. These remain the essential features of
slang at the end of the 1990s, although its extreme informality may now seem
less shocking than it used to, and its users now include ravers, rappers and
net-heads along with the miscreants traditionally cited.
There are other characteristics which have been used to
delimit slang, but these may often be the result of prejudice and
misunderstanding and not percipience. Slang has been referred to again and
again as ‘illegitimate’, ‘low and disreputable’ and condemned by serious
writers as ‘a sign and a cause of mental atrophy’(Oliver Wendell Holmes), ‘the
advertisement of mental poverty’(James C. Fernal). Its in-built unorthodoxy has
led to the assumption that slang in all its incarnations (metaphors,
euphemisms, taboo words, catchphrases, nicknames, abbreviations and the rest)
is somehow inherently substandard and unwholesome. But linguists and
lexicographers cannot (or at least, should not) stigmatise words in the way that
society may stigmatise the users of those words and, looked at objectively,
slang is no more reprehensible than poetry, with which it has much in common in
its creative playing with the conventions and mechanisms of language, its
manipulation of metonymy, synechdoche, irony, its wit and inventiveness. In
understanding this, and also that slang is a natural product of those
‘processes eternally active in language’, Walt Whitman was ahead of his time.
More recently some writers (Halliday being an influential
example) have claimed that the essence of slang is that it is language used in
conscious opposition to authority. But slang does not have to be subversive; it
may simply encode a shared experience, celebrate a common outlook which may be
based as much on (relatively) innocent enjoyment (by, for instance,
schoolchildren, drinkers, sports fans, Internet-users) as on illicit
activities. Much slang, in fact, functions as an alternative vocabulary,
replacing standard terms with more forceful, emotive or interesting versions
just for the fun of it: hooter or conk for nose, mutt or pooch for dog,
ankle-biter or crumb-snatcher for child are instances. Still hoping to find a
defining characteristic, other experts have seized upon the rapid turnover of
slang words and announced that this is the key element at work; that slang is
concerned with faddishness and that its here-today-gone-tomorrow components are
ungraspable and by implication inconsequential. Although novelty and innovation
are very important in slang, a close examination of the whole lexicon reveals
that, as Whitman had noted, it is not necessarily transient at all. The word
punk, for example, has survived in the linguistic underground since the
seventeenth century and among the slang synonyms for money - dosh, ackers,
spondulicks, rhino, pelf - which were popular in the City of London in the
1990s are many which are more than a hundred years old. A well-known word like
cool in its slang sense is still in use (and has been adopted by other
languages, too), although it first appeared around eighty years ago.
Curiously, despite the public’s increasing fascination for
slang, as evinced in newspaper and magazine articles and radio programmes,
academic linguists in the UK have hitherto shunned it as a field of study. This
may be due to a lingering conservatism, or to the fact that it is the standard
varieties of English that have to be taught, but whatever the reasons the
situation is very different elsewhere. In the US and Australia the study of
slang is part of the curriculum in many institutions, in France, Spain,
Holland, Scandinavia and Eastern Europe slang, and especially the slang of
English, is the subject of more and more research projects and student theses;
in all these places slang is discussed in symposia and in learned journals,
while in Russia, China and Japan local editions of British and American slang
dictionaries can be found on school bookshelves and in university libraries.
Slang Lexicographers
The first glossaries or lexicons of European slang on record
were lists of the verbal curiosities used by thieves and ne’er-do-wells which
were compiled in Germany and France in the fifteenth century. A hundred years
later the first English collections appeared under the titles The Hye Waye to
the Spytell House, by Copland, Fraternite of Vacabondes, by Awdeley, and Caveat
for Common Cursetours, by Harman. Although dramatists and pamphleteers of
seventeenth-century England made spirited use of slang in their works, it was
not until the very end of the 1600s that the next important compilation, the
first real dictionary of slang, appeared. This was A New Dictionary of the
Terms ancient and modern of the Canting Crew by ‘B. E. Gent’, a writer whose
real identity is lost to us. In 1785, Captain Francis Grose published the first
edition of his Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, the most important
contribution to slang lexicography until John Camden Hotten’s Dictionary of
Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words, 1859, which was overtaken its turn by
Farmer and Henley’s more sophisticated Slang and its Analogues in 1890. All
these were published in Britain and it was the New Zealander Eric Partridge’s
single-handed masterwork A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, also
published in London, in 1937, that, despite its lack of citations and sometimes
eccentric etymologies, became the yardstick of slang scholarship at least until
the arrival of more rigorously organised compendiums from the USA in the 1950s.
Since then several larger reference works have been published, usually
confining themselves to one geographical area and based mainly on written
sources, together with a number of smaller, often excellent specialist
dictionaries dealing with categories such as naval slang, Glaswegian slang,
rhyming slang, the argot of police and criminals and the jargon of finance and
high technology.
The Bloomsbury Dictionary Of Contemporary
Slang
The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang was first
produced with the idea of combining the enthusiasms and instincts of a user of
slang - someone who had been part of the subcultures and milieux where this
language variety has flourished ( and in later life still ventures into clubs,
bars, music festivals, football matches and, on occasion, homeless shelters) -
with the methods of the modern lexicographer (earlier work on the Longman
Dictionary of Contemporary English being a particular influence) and applied
linguist. The first edition set out to record the 6,000 or so key terms and
15,000-odd definitions which formed the core of worldwide English language
slang from 1950 to 1990: the new, updated edition, published in Autumn 1997,
extends the time-frame almost to the millennium and expands the number of
entries by two thousand, losing a few obscure, doubtfully attested or just
plain uninteresting terms in the process. The dictionary aims to pick up the
elusive and picturesque figures of speech that really are in use out there in
the multiple anglophone speech communities, and many terms which appear in its
pages have never been recorded before. In keeping with the modern principles of
dictionary-making, the headwords which are listed here are defined as far as
possible in natural, discursive language. The modern dictionary ideally moves
beyond mere definition and tries to show how a term functions in the language,
who uses it and when and why, what special associations or overtones it may
have, perhaps even how it is pronounced. Where possible a history of the word
and an indication of its origin will be included and its usage illustrated by
an authentic citation or an invented exemplary phrase or sentence.
As with all similar dictionaries, the Bloomsbury volume is
based to some extent on consulting written sources such as newspapers,
magazines, comic books, novels and works of non-fiction. Other secondary
sources of slang are TV and radio programmes, films and song lyrics. Existing
glossaries compiled by researchers, by journalists and by Internet enthusiasts
were also checked, but treated, like fictional texts and broadcasts, with
caution; investigators may be misled by their informants and, as society
becomes more self-conscious in its treatment of new and unorthodox language,
varieties of so-called slang appear that are only partly authentic, such as the
gushing 'teen-talk' (a variety of journalese) appearing in UK magazines like
Just Seventeen, My Guy or Sugar directed by twenty- and thirty-something
journalists at their much younger readers, or the argot developed by writers
for cult movies such as Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey, Wayne's World and
Clueless. The embellishing or inventing of slang is nothing new; Damon Runyon,
Raymond Chandler and P. G. Wodehouse all indulged in it, as did British TV
comedy writers for Porridge, Minder, Only Fools and Horses, etc., over the last
three decades. For the Bloomsbury dictionary terms have been admitted if they
can be verified from two or more sources, thereby, sadly, shutting out examples
of idiolect (one person's private language), restricted sociolects (terms
shared by very small groups) and nonce terms (one-off coinages).
Any description of slang that is based purely on secondary
or written sources (and most still are) cannot hope to do justice to a language
which is primarily transmitted orally. Slang terms may exist in spoken usage
for many years, even for centuries, before being written down; some are never
committed to paper, so there is an absolute need for work ‘in the field’ with
primary sources; eavesdropping on and interviewing the users of slang
themselves, and, where they are not able to report objectively on the words and
phrases they are using, their neighbours, parents, colleagues, fellow-students
and friends must be mobilised. This is the most exciting part of lexicography,
if sometimes the most risky. The modern language researchers going undercover
to listen in on conversations or setting up networks of informants at
street-level can imagine themselves as successors to the pioneering
anthropologists of the last century, rather than ‘harmless drudges’ (Dr Johnson's
memorable definition of the lexicographer) toiling alone in dusty libraries or
staring at flickering screens.
Slang at the Millennium
The traditional breeding grounds of slang have always been
secretive, often disenfranchised social groups and closed institutions with
their rituals and codes. This has not changed, although the users in question
have. Where once it was the armed forces, the public schools and Oxbridge that
in Britain dominated socially and linguistically, now it is the media, the comprehensive
playground and the new universities which exercise most influence on popular
language: the office, the trading-floor and the computer-room have replaced the
workshop, the factory and the street-market as nurturing environments for
slang. The street gang and the prison, whence came nearly all the ‘cant’ that
filled the early glossaries, still provide a great volume of slang, as do the
subcultures of rave, techno and jungle music, crusties and new agers, skaters
and snowboarders. Football metaphors and in-jokes have long since ousted the
cricketing imagery of yesteryear. Some special types of slang including
pig-latin (infixing)and backslang (reversal, as in yob )seem virtually to have
disappeared in the last few years, while the rhyming slang which arose in the
early Victorian age continues to flourish in Britain and Australia, replenished
by succeeding generations, and the even older parlyaree (a
romance/romany/yiddish lingua franca) lingers on in corners of London’s
theatre-land and gay community. The effect of the media and more recently of
the Internet means that slang in English can no longer be seen as a set of
discrete localised dialects, but as a continuum or a bundle of overlapping
vocabularies stretching from North America and the Caribbean through Ireland
and the UK on to South Africa, South and East Asia and Australasia. Each of
these communities has its own peculiarities of speech, but instantaneous
communications and the effect of English language movies, TV soaps and music
means that there is a core of slang that is common to all of them and into
which they can feed. The feeding in still comes mainly from the US, and to a
lesser extent Britain and Australia; slang from other areas and the slang of
minorities in the larger communities has yet to make much impression on global
English, with one significant exception. That is the black slang which buzzes
between Brooklyn, Trenchtown, Brixton and Soweto before, in many cases,
crossing over to pervade the language of the underworld, teenagers ( - it is
the single largest source for current adolescent slang in both the UK and US),
the music industry and showbusiness. Within one country previously obscure
local slang can become nationally known, whether spread by the bush telegraph
that has always linked schools and colleges or by the media: Brookside,
Coronation Street, Rab C. Nesbitt and Viz magazine have all helped in
disseminating British regionalisms. This mixing-up of national and local means
that past assumptions about usage may no longer hold true: the earnest English
traveller, having learned that fag and bum mean something else in North
America, now finds that in fashionable US campus-speak they can actually mean
cigarette and backside. In the meantime the alert American in Britain learns that
cigarettes have become tabs or biffs and backside is now often rendered by the
Jamaican batty .
Speakers of English everywhere seem to have become more
liberal, admitting more and more slang into their unselfconscious everyday
speech; gobsmacked , O.T.T ., wimp and sorted can now be heard among the
respectable British middle-aged; terms such as horny and bullshit which were
not so long ago considered vulgar in the extreme are now heard regularly on
radio and television, while former taboo terms, notably the ubiquitous British
shag , occur even in the conversation of young ladies. In Oakland, California,
the liberalising process reached new extremes late in 1996 with the promotion
of so-called Ebonics : black street speech given equal status with the language
of the dominant white culture.
Youthspeak
The greatest number of new terms appearing in the new
edition of the dictionary are used by adolescents and children, the group in
society most given to celebrating heightened sensations, new experiences and to
renaming the features of their world, as well as mocking anyone less
interesting or younger or older than themselves. But the rigid generation gap
which used to operate in the family and school has to some extent disappeared.
Children still distance themselves from their parents and other authority
figures by their use of a secret code, but the boomers - the baby boom
generation - grew up identifying themselves with subversion and liberalism and,
now that they are parents in their turn, many of them are unwilling either to
disapprove of or to give up the use of slang, picking up their children's words
(often much to the latters' embarrassment) and evolving their own family-based
language ( helicopters, velcroids, howlers, chap-esses are examples).
The main obsessions among slang users of all ages, as
revealed by word counts, have not changed; intoxication by drink or drugs
throws up (no pun intended) the largest number of synonyms; lashed, langered,
mullered and hooted are recent additions to this part of the lexicon. These are
followed by words related to sex and romance - copping off, out trouting, on
the sniff and jam, lam, slam and the rest - and the many vogue terms of
approval that go in and out of fashion among the young (in Britain ace, brill, wicked
and phat have given way to top, mint, fit and dope which are themselves on the
way out at the time of writing). The number of nicknames for money, bollers,
boyz, beer-tokens, squirt and spon among them, has predictably increased since
the materialist 1980s and adolescent concern with identity-building and
status-confirming continues to produce a host of dismissive epithets for the
unfortunate misfit, some of which, like wendy, spod, licker, are confined to
the school environment while others, such as trainspotter, anorak and geek ,
have crossed over into generalised usage.
Other obsessions are more curious; is it the North American
housewife’s hygiene fetish which has given us more than a dozen terms
(dust-bunny, dust-kitty, ghost-turd, etc.) for the balls of fluff found on an
unswept floor, where British English has only one (beggars velvet )? Why do
speakers in post-industrial Britain and Australia still need a dozen or more
words to denote the flakes of dung that hang from the rear of sheep and other mammals,
words like dags, dangleberries, dingleberries, jub-nuts, winnets and wittens ?
Teenagers have their fixations, finding wigs (toop, syrup, Irish, rug) and
haemorrhoids (farmers, Emma Freuds, nauticals) particularly hilarious. A final
curiosity is the appearance in teenage speech fashionable vogue terms which are
actually much older than their users realise: once again referring to money,
British youth has come up with luka ( the humorous pejorative "filthy
lucre" in a new guise), Americans with duckets (formerly
"ducats", the Venetian gold coins used all over Renaissance Europe).
There are some examples of
nowadays’ slang which I found from very interesting site:
A:
An A
tuning fork.
Example: Man, my guitar's way out of tune. Can you pass me my A?
|
a
(good) kay and a half: One and a half kilometres; the distance to anywhere from
anywhere else; a long way.
Example: Where's Christie's Beach? About a kay and a half that way.
How far are we from home? We'd be a good kay and a half, I reckon.
|
A
Buck One-Eighty: You have A Buck Three-Eighty. I have always heard it this way--so
there's a variant.
Example: Wonder if a buck three-eighty is actually the same amount as
a buck one-eighty?
|
a
buck three eighty: The price for anything.
Example: Q: How much is this, sir? A: That's a buck three eighty.
|
a
case of the ass or redass: Highly annoyed, pissed off. Currently used in US Army.
Example: Sergeant Greenfield has this huge case of the ass with me
ever since I wrecked his humvee.
|
a
couple two three: I guess this means two or three. (We don't say this in
Chicago. It's a weird thing they say out west or something.)
Example: He had a couple two three dogs in his yard.
|
a
dollar three eightyfive: A nonsensical price for when one does not want to give the
real price.
Example: How much did my Lexus cost? A dollar three eightyfive.
|
a
double: A
twenty dollar bill.
Example: I've got eighty dollars on me, all I need is a double to make
it a hundred.
[A double sawbuck is a twenty. Read Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler to
see fin, sawbuck, and double sawbuck in action.]
|
a
fin: Five
dollars. (Gamblers use it for $500.)
Example: All I have is a fin and two dollars in change in my pocket.
|
a
freddy: a
pint of beer, more specifically a pint of heineken, named after the late
freddy heineken
Example: Two freddys and a ginger ale, please.
|
a
happy Birthday: A phrase mostly used by guys when they catch themselves in a situation
when
a girl exposes some part of her anatomy without knowing it, clothed or not.
Usually happens at the gym.
Example: Did you see that girl's shirt? Now that is a happy birthday.
|
A
List: The
people at school who are cooler than anyone else in the school.
Example: I'm not cool enough to go out with her--she's A list.
|
a
Monet: Someone
who is very good looking from a distance, yet from up close the attraction
diminishes.
Example: He was hot from afar, but he turned out to be a Monet when I
went up to speak.
|
a
mouse in his pocket: Phrase used to describe someone large, probably very
strong, but intensely stupid. From _Of Mice and Men_[?]
Example: We've got a new guy at work who worries me; I swear I think
he's got a mouse in his pocket.
|
a
nifty: A
fifty dollar bill.
Example: I borrowed a nifty from my mom and she upped it five bucks
more.Now I owe her fifty-five dollars.
|
a
pig in your pocket: Used when a person doesn't want to assist another.
Example: What do you mean we? Is there a pig in your pocket?
|
a
sims moment: Brief moment in which you can relate something in real life to
something in the computer simulation game The Sims. Usually occurs after
rounds of playing said game.
Example: I'm having a sims moment. This kitchen looks almost like what
I did in The Sims last night.
|
a
sleeve: A
hundred dollar bill.
Example: I got seven hundred dollars, all in sleeves.
|
a
solid: A
favor.
Example: Do me a solid and send me that website link.
|
a
whole 'nother: An entirely different. I've noticed this phrase in the vocabulary of
many people of various backgrounds and have even heard it on national TV, but
I have yet to see it written down (before now).
Example: That's a whole 'nother story.
|
A's
and C's: n.
(plural) abbr. of Arts and Crafts. Slang form, creative endeavour.
Example: They're letting me out of that place today so I can do some
A's and C's.
|
A'stake:
A mistake,
(Thanks, Erin.)
Example: I'm sorry, I made a'stake.
|
A-Bag:
Real
estate exchanger term meaning a keeper property that would not be traded off
without a substantial advantage gained.
Example: That's a good property--it's A-Bag.
|
A-D-orable:
Really
adorable and cute.
Example: Look at that guy, he's A-D-orable!
|
a-delic:
Usually
seen after funk, mack, or shag. Emphasizes the previous word to its maximum.
Example: That lowrider is pimp-a-delic.
|
a-dollar-three-eighty:
The price
for anything.
Example: Question: How much is it? Answer: A-dollar-three-eighty.
|
a-game:
To do your
best effort possible in any endeavor, not just pertaining to sports.
Example: I didn't do to well on that test last week, next time I'm
going to bring my A-game.
|
A-list:
A mythical
group of weblogs and personal sites (and their creators) who are simply Much
Cooler Than You. It is worth noting that (a) no such list actually exists,
(b) those who are on the list adamantly deny its existence, and (c) it is not
the same as the Cabal. A-list is frequently used in a mocking manner by those
who are not members.
Example: Oh, one link from kottke.org and now you go all A-list on us!
OR You haven't seen this yet? All the A-listers linked to it.
|
a-loin:
Used in
the place alone. Especially leave me alone.
Example: I'm having a bad day, so just leave me a-loin.
|
A-madnay:
(uh-mad-nay)
From the French, un moment donné, at a given time.
Example: We really need to catch up. Maybe we could go for coffee
a-madnay.
|
a-scared:
Like
afraid, but not as dramatic. Usually an adjective, but sometimes a verb.
Example: Oh, you a-scared me, I didn't know anyone was here.
|
A.R.
three-eighty: An anal rententive person. A perfectionist.
Example: Ugh, look at how he constantly straightens his hair. What an
A.R. three-eighty.
|
Aabar:
To use
sly, deceitful, or illegal tactics to occupy the first place in any ordered
listing, esp. phone directories.
Example: You will have to aabar well to rank higher in the dictionary
than this.
|
aaboos:
Abuse.
Brummie translation of the Welsh.
Example: You are aaboosing me, you naughty Welshman.
|
aaiight!:
All Right!
Used in times of intense emotion.
Example: Dad: Son, get in there and clean your room. Son: Aaiight!
|
aarqeunaamaaei:
(Pronounciation:
arch-ay-nay-mey) Used in the place of arch enemy. However, aarqeunaamaaei
usually refers to political enemies.
(Plural: aarqeunaamaaeis)
Example: Fidel Castro and George W. Bush are aarqeunaamaaeis.
|
Aazing:
Like
amazing, but not quite.
Example: The 30-story building was aazing.
|
abacoral:
The
backbone of a snail.
Example: Hello, class. We're going to look for abacorals today.
|
Abal:
Used by
the younger generation to label a person as dumb, uncouth, unsophisticated.
Example: You're just an Abal.
|
abbamatically:
The
tendency for an unbearably cloying song to
repeat over and over in your head all day after hearing it on the radio.
Example: More Than a Woman has been playing abbamatically in my head
since breakfast.
|
abbeverate:
To feed a
person a drink, to offer a drink, or provide a drink.
Example: I'm going to abbeverate our guests before they die of thirst.
|
Abdicate:
To give up
all hope of ever having a flat stomach.
Example: If you drink 24 beers a day you must be prepared to abdicate
seeing your toes again.
|
abeer:
used in
place of ahmen, usually as a type of thanks.
Example: Paul-I'll get the next round of sodas. Group (in
unision)-abeer!
|
abella:
Someone
who owns everything possible.
Example: That abella rules at Counter-strike.
|
Aberzombie:
One who
wears only Abercrombie & Fitch clothing.
Example: Trust me, you're not his type. He's only into other
Aberzombies like himself.
|
abnatural:
an obscene
violation of what is natural.
Example: McDonald's food, industrial pollution, and repression of
happiness are all abnatural, screaming contradictions to healthy existence.
|
abode:
A board. A
piece of lumber used to build a structure.
Example: Is that abode fence?
|
aboot:
About.
Used to emphasize Canadianess.
Example: You're Canadian?
What are you talking aboot, eh?
|
abra-kebabra:
The
inevitability that the kebab you are consuming at 3am after one too many
beers
with your mates will reappear in the very near future.
Example: We had almost made it home after a big night out when
suddenly....abra-kebabra.
|
ABS:
Asshole
Behavior Scale. Logarithmic scale from 1 to 10 used to measure how much of an
asshole someone is being. Similar to the Richter scale for earthquakes with
each whole number representing an intensity 10 times greater than the next
lower number.
Example: Chris's extremely cranky again today. Had to be at least a
6.2 on the ABS.
|
absogoddamnlutely:
Ultimate
absolutely.
Example: I am absogodamnlutely sure I've used this word hundreds of
times.
|
absoludacris:
Something
absolutely ludicrous--say, to Mr. T, for example.
Example: Drugs are *bad* Drugs are absoludacris.
|
absoludicrous:
The peak
of ridiculousness. Absolutely ludicrous.
Example: Look! That guy has blue hair. How absoludicrous.
|
absonotly:
Used when
the intent is to most definitely decline in no uncertain terms.
Example: I absonotly won't do that.
|
absopause:
(n) When,
for some odd reason, everyone shuts up and listens when you talk. Rare.
Example: During the absopause, everyone heard Rob's plan.
|
absopositively:
(adj)
Absolutely and positively combined.
Example: I am absopositively sure that Milton likes you.
|
absosilence:
(n) When
everyone in a noisy room becomes silent at the same time with no apparent
cause.
Example: Three-hundred people shut up at the same time. The
absosilence was weird.
|
Absotively:
Combination
of absolutely and positively. Usually used an answer to a request.
Example: Q: Will you go to the store for me?
A: Absotively.
|
absotively-posilutely:
Scrambled
absolutely and positively.
Example: I am absotively-posilutely sure about that.
|
abstractional-dopmology:
The study
of brown dots in any carpet.
Example: I see you've been catching up on your
abstractional-dopmology.
|
Absurdbaijan:
(n) The
realm or domain of absurd ideas.
Example: John must be from Absurdbaijan; he thinks aliens are spying
on him with mashed potatoes.
|
abuba:
Huh?
Example: My math teacher asked me, Can you prove that there are
infinitely many real numbers? I replied, Abuba?
|
abyssagation:
A void
before a great discovery, as well as a person who has writers' block and then
writes better than he's ever written.
Example: Any inventor has experienced abyssagation in his life at
least once.
|
Abyssicaletphedence:
An endless
nothingness of boredom.
Example: James sat in abyssicaletphedence druing class.
|
abyssinia:
I'll be
seeing you.
Example: Abyssinia!
|
AC:
Atlantic
City, New Jersey.
Example: AC is a pretty ghetto town.
|
Accckkkk:
Exclamation.
Example: Accckkkk! The monkey sold the liver I was planning on using
for the transplant.
|
accellurate:
To add (a
lot, and fast) extra minutes to your cellular plan.
Example: I've been accellurated to 3000 minutes on nights and
weekends.
|
accipurp:
A
deliberate act intended to appear accidental
Example: I hit him by accipurp.
|
accipurpodentally:
Accidentally
on purpose, when you meant to do something but pretend you really didn't.
Example: I accipurpodentally hit on my sister's guy friend.
|
accordianated:
Being able
to refold a road map and drive at the same time.
Example: She showed how accordianated she was by folding up the road
map and steering the car at the same time.
|
accribitz,
deccribitz: Used in an episode of the TV show _Veronica's Closet_ when a character
could not think of a synonym for increase or decrease.
Example: I expect sales figures to accribitz in the next quarter.
|
ace:
One's best
friend.
Example: Jim's my ace.
|
ace:
excellent,
great
Example: I had an ace time at Jeff's party!
|
ace:
Ass, fool.
Example: I ran into a wall today, and felt like an ace.
|
aces:
Said in a
very excited moment, when there is just nothing else to say. From poker,
where the best hand is five aces.
Example: A. That gorgeous babe over there just asked me for your phone
number. B. Aces!
|
achecanantooch:
To eat
foreign food.
Example: I'm hungry. Let's achecanantooch all night!
|
acheye:
The pain
you feel in your eyes after looking at a screen for ages.
Example: Acheye is really setting in now; but, boy, is this screen
entertaining.
|
Achoo:
Used when
a conversation is boring, to stir excitement or some type of response, using
follow by something like Oh, all the silence is making me sneeze.
Example: .... Achoo! Oh, Bless me, I'm allergic to silence.
|
achuwie:
A varation
of the word actually; a poor pronunciation of actually, often caused by
speaking too fast.
Example: I achuwie am getting too excited. That's why my speech is
slurred.
|
ack:
Exclamation
used to indicate surprise, irritation, or disgust, often with one's own
actions.
Example: Ack! I deleted my entire inbox!
|
acklapootis:
Cool,
awesome, etc.
Example: Angelina Jolie is one acklapootis babe when she gets to
talkin' about her and Billy Bob.
|
aclueistic:
Incapable
of having a clue
Example: If you have to ask, you must be aclueistic.
|
acluistic:
Not having
a clue.
Example: Those cable repair guys are acluistic.
|
acrapulate:
Word used
for describing a large amount of useless junk collected over a period of time
.
Example: I can't believe how much I've acrapulated over the years.
|
acribit:
To
increase.
Example: There are many ways to acribit your wealth.
(P.S. Why would you write, Please use the word you are submitting in the
example?
Are people honestly that stupid? Err, sorry, forget I said that. ;)
|
acrojumble:
Using too
many acronyms. Such as, I'd love to, but it is the DFR deadline week for all
KIXs and ZSWs.
Example: Her memo was unreadable because of severe acrojumble.
|
acronize:
To provide
an acronym for.
Example: I tried to acronize his name into a befitting insult, but
failed to produce anything suitable.
|
Acronyze:
(verb) The
process of shortening phrases, via an acronym, for the purpose of simplifing
statements. Typically used in technical data reporting or inter-office
e-mails.
(IE FUBAR or KISS)
Example: I didn't realize that phrase had been acronyzed.
|
Action
tooth: A
gold tooth. Can also mean to smile, as in Show me your action tooth.
Example: I got some pictures of you the other night flashing your
action tooth.
|
adalada:
Ay-duh-la-duh.
Not a lot.
Example: Brandon: What's goin on?
Nicky: Adalada.
|
adam
henry: From
the phonetical representation for the letters a and h.
Typically used by law enforcement officers on the radio to inform another
officer that the person
they are dealing with is behaving like an asshole.
Example: 104 to Control; start additional assistance for an adam henry
|
adda
be: Congratulatory
phrase, often used in a sarcastic manner.
Example: Your girlfriend just slapped you in front of the whole
school? Adda be, doofus.
|
addictant:
what you
are addicted to
Example: Nicotine is quite an addictant.
|
addictefreak:
One who is
addicted to something 24/7.
Example: Boy, Sam is sure an addictefreak when it comes to StarCraft.
|
Addy:
short form
of address
Example: What is your addy? What is the addy?
|
adevo:
A
generally exaggerated amount. Also used to refer to smack downs in video
games.
Example: Who wants to feel the adevo power?
|
Adger:
A mistake,
or pathetically stupid remark in conversation, usually involving disastrous
consequences,
which could have been avoided with even the slightest amount of forethought.
Example: Oh, mate, that certainly was an enormous adger you made
there, and now you look a right tit.
|
adipolli:
Superb,Fantastic.
Example: The stage show was adipolli.
|
admin:
Administrator.
Also used to describe one who knows nothing about her job and ends up doing
it poorly.
Example: Slim: Grrr. Who chose these workstations anyway? And why this
software? Bob: Oh, that'd be the admin.
|
administraitor:
A
semi-high-level government employee who blows the whistle on her agency.
Example: Our former boss, Harvey, sure put a lot of us out of work.
Damned administraitor.
|
administrivia: Small print at the bottom
of written documents, particularly those written by corporate lawyers.
Example:
|
You can see here: #"#">#"#">http://www.slangsite.com/