Also 8–9 linguo. [? corrupt form of LINGUA (franca): see LINGUA 2, 2 b, and cf. Pg. lingoa.] A contemptuous designation for: Foreign speech or language; language which is strange or unintelligible to the person who so designates it; language peculiar to some special subject, or employed (whether properly or affectedly) by some particular class of persons.
1660. New Haven Col. Rec. (1858), II. 337. To wch the plant [= plaintiff] answered, that he was not acquainted with Dutch lingo.
1700. Congreve, Way of World, IV. iv. Well, Well, I shall understand your Lingo one of these days, Cozen; in the mean while I must answer in plain English.
1702. C. Mather, Magn. Chr., III. 193. They are Sesquipedalia Verba of which their [sc. the American Indians’] Linguo is composed.
1749. Fielding, Tom Jones, VI. ii. I have often warned you not to talk the court gibberish to me. I tell you, I don’t understand the lingo.
1758. J. Chubbe, Misc. Tracts (1770), I. 84. When men speak French, or any Outlandish Linguo.
1778. Sheridan, Camp, II. ii. You may swear he is a foreigner by his lingo.
1818. Blackw. Mag., III. 407. The linguo of the Virtuoso clan.
1861. Geo. Eliot, in Cross, Life (1885), II. 312. The good man … began to pray in a borrowed, washy lingo.
1864. Kingsley, Lett. to his Wife, in Life (1879), II. 168. The Basques speak a lingo utterly different from all European languages.
1866. Lowell, Biglow P., Introd. Poems 1890, II. 165. I should be half inclined to name the Yankee a lingo rather than a dialect.
1875. Jowett, Plato (ed. 2), II. 470. They come with their barbarous lingo to flatter us.
1875. E. C. Stedman, Victorian Poets, 187. To use the lingo of the phrenologists, his locality is better than his individuality.
