Slang

subs., adj., and verb. (old: now recognised).—TERMINAL ESSAY and quots. As verb. = (1) to speak slang; and (2) to scold or abuse. As adj. = (1) relating to slang; (2) = low, unrefined; and (3) = angry: also SLANGY and SLANGULAR. SLANGINESS = the state of being slangy; SLANG-BOYS (or BOYS OF THE SLANG) (see quot. 1789); SLANGSTER = a master of FLASH (q.v.); SLANGWHANGER = a speaker addicted to slang: whence SLANGWHANGING, and SLANGWHANG, verb. = to scold; SLANGANDER (American) = to backbite; SLANGOOSING (American) = tittle-tattle, backbiting, esp. of women.

  1743.  FIELDING, Jonathan Wild, ‘Advice to His Successor.’ The master who teaches them [young thieves] should be a man well versed in the cant language, commonly called the SLANG patter, in which they should by all means excel.

  1761.  FOOTE, The Lyar. [T. L. KINGTON-OLIPHANT, The New English, ii. 180. A man begs “in the College cant” to tick a little longer (remain in debt); this cant was soon to make way for SLANG]. Ibid. (1762), The Orators, i. Foote. Have you not seen the bills? Scamper. What, about the lectures? ay, but that’s all SLANG, I suppose,… no, no.

  1785.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. FLASH LINGO. The canting or SLANG language. Ibid., GILES’. St. Giles Greek, the cant language, called also SLANG, Pedler’s French, and Flash.

  1789.  G. PARKER, Life’s Painter. SLANG BOYS, fellows who speak the SLANG language which is the same as flash and cant.

  1796.  W. TAYLOR, Monthly Review, xx. 543–4. The personages have mostly the manners and language of elegant middle life, removed alike from the rant of tragedy or the SLANG of farce.

  1798.  The Anti-Jacobin, xvii. 5 March, 599. Stanzas … conceived rather in the SLANG or Brentford dialect.

  1807.  IRVING, Salmagundi, No. 14. It embraces alike all manner of concerns,… to … the personal disputes of two miserable SLANG-WHANGERS, the cleaning of the streets…. Ibid. (1824), Tales of a Traveller, I. 273. SLANG talk and cant jokes.

  1809.  MALKIN, Gil Blas [ROUTLEDGE], 47. He [a doctor] had got into reputation with the public by a certain professional SLANG.

  1813.  EDGEWORTH, Patronage, iii. The total want of proper pride and dignity … a certain SLANG and familiarity of tone, gave superficial observers the notion that he was good-natured.

  1816.  Gentleman’s Magazine, lxxxvi, May, 418. Unwilling to be a disciple of the stable, the kennel, and the sty, as of the other precious SLANG, the dialect of Newgate.

  1817.  COLERIDGE, Biographia Literaria, II. xvi. To make us laugh by … SLANG phrases for the day.

  1819.  ROBERT RABELAIS THE YOUNGER, Abeillard and Heloisa, Canto II. 35.

  1821.  GALT, The Ayrshire Legatees, viii. Living on the town, as it is SLANGISHLY called.

  1821.  DE QUINCEY, Confessions of an English Opium-eater (1862), 234. According to the modern SLANG phrase.

  1821.  W. T. MONCRIEFF, Tom and Jerry, 5. Flash, my young friend, or SLANG, as others call it, is the classical language of the Holy Land; in other words, St. Giles’s Greek.

  1824.  SCOTT, Redgauntlet, xiii. What did actually reach his ears was disguised so completely by the use of cant words, and the thieves-Latin called SLANG, that even when he caught the words, he found himself as far as ever from the sense of their conversation.

  1827.  BULWER-LYTTON, Pelham, xlix. We rowed, swore, SLANGED.

  1837.  HOOD, ‘Ode to Rae Wilson.’

  1840.  HOOD, Up the Rhine, 62. In spite of a SLANG air, a knowing look, and the use of certain significant phrases, that are most current in London.

  1845.  New York Commercial Advertiser, 10 Oct. Part of the customary SLANG-WHANGING against all other nations which is habitual to the English press.

  1849.  C. KINGSLEY, Alton Locke, ii. Be quiet, you fool … you’re a pretty fellow to chaff the orator; he’ll SLANG you up the chimney before you get your shoes on. Ibid., vi. A tall, handsome, conceited, SLANGY boy.

  1851–61.  H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, III. 350. To SLANG with the fishwives.

  1852.  BRISTED, The Upper Ten Thousand, p. 205. Here I have been five days, fussing, and paying, and swearing (legally, you understand, not profanely) at the custom-house, and then ‘hazing’—what you call SLANGING—upholsterers.

  1853.  W. J. HICKIE, trans. The Comedies of Aristophanes, ‘The Knights.’ Drunk he shall SLANG with the harlots.

  1853.  DICKENS, Bleak House, xi. His strength lying in a SLANGULAR direction. Ibid. (1865), Our Mutual Friend, II. iv. Both were too gaudy, too SLANGY, too odorous of cigars, and too much given to horseflesh.

  1857.  H. REED, Lectures on the British Poets, ix. A freedom and coarseness of diction denominated SLANG, a word belonging to the very vocabulary it denotes.

  1872.  G. ELIOT, Middlemarch, xi. All choice of words is SLANG.… Correct English is the SLANG of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest SLANG of all is the SLANG of poets.

  1875.  W. D. WHITNEY, The Life and Growth of Language, vii. There are grades and uses of SLANG whose charm no one need be ashamed to feel and confess; it is like reading a narrative in a series of rude and telling pictures instead of in words.

  1879–81.  SKEAT, Etymological Dictionary, s.v. SLANG … is from the Norwegian sleng, a slinging, a device, a burden of a song. Slengja, to sling; slengja kieften, TO SLANG, abuse (lit. to sling the jaw; SLENG-JENAMN, a slang (i.e., an abusive name); slengje-ord, an insulting word; all from slengja, to sling.

  1881–9.  Encyclopædic Dictionary, s.v. SLANG. A kind of colloquial language current amongst one particular class, or amongst various classes of society, uneducated or educated, but which, not having received the stamp of general approval, is frequently considered as inelegant or vulgar. Almost every profession or calling has its own SLANG.… In this sense it means any colloquial words or phrases, vulgar or refined, used conventionally by each particular class of people in speaking of particular matters connected with their own calling. SLANG is sometimes allied to, but not quite identical with cant.

  1884.  H. JAMES, A Little Tour in France, xii. As the game went on and he lost … he … SLANGED his partner, declared he would n’t play any more, and went away in a fury.

  1886.  Daily Telegraph, 11 Sept. A tipsy virago SLANGING the magistrate to the high amusement of the top-booted constables. Ibid., 1 Jan. It is the business of SLANGINESS to make everything ugly. Ibid., 13 Sept. ‘Don’t be so SLANGY, Julia.’ remonstrates her father.

  1888.  Poor Nellie, 17. Looked awfully SLANGY then? I’m sure she was in a wax.

  1898.  Century Dictionary, s.v. SLANG. 1. The cant words or jargon used by thieves, peddlers, beggars, and the vagabond classes generally. 2. In present use, colloquial words and phrases which have originated in the cant or rude speech of the vagabond or unlettered classes, or, belonging in form to standard speech, have acquired or have had given them restricted, capricious, or extravagantly metaphorical meanings, and are regarded as vulgar or inelegant…. SLANG as such is not necessarily vulgar or ungrammatical; indeed, it is generally correct in idiomatic form, and though frequently censured on this ground, it often, in fact, owes its doubtful character to other causes.

  1899.  R. WHITEING, No. 5 John Street, vi. A SLANGING MATCH … and the unnamable in invective and vituperation rises, as in blackest vapor, from our pit to the sky.

  1900.  Nation, 9 Oct., 289. SLANG in the sense of the cant language of thieves appears in print as early as the middle of the last century [see quot. 1743 supra]. Scott when using the word felt the necessity of defining it; and his definition shows not only that it was generally unknown but that it had not then begun to depart from its original sense.

  2.  (old).—A leg iron; a fetter (GROSE and VAUX). [Formerly about three three feet long, the SLANG being attached to an iron anklet rivetted on the leg: the SLACK (q.v.) was slung to the waistbelt.] Whence (3) = a watch-chain. In Dutch slang, SLANG = (1) a snake, and (2) a chain.

  c. 1787.  Kilmainham Minit [Ireland Sixty Years Ago, 88].

  c. 1866.  VANCE, The Chickaleary Cove. How to do a cross-fan for a super or SLANG.

  1877.  J. W. HORSLEY, Jottings from Jail, i. Thus, ‘Fullied for a Clock and SLANG,’ reveals the fact that the writer stole a watch and chain.

  1900.  MAJOR ARTHUR GRIFFITHS, Fast and Loose, xxxiii. If I am caught it’ll mean a ‘bashing’ and the SLANGS.

  1901.  W. S. WALKER, In the Blood, 138. A watch and chain, or in thieves’ language “white lot” and thimble and SLANG.

  4.  (old).—False weights and measures (e.g., a slang quart = 1¹/₂ pts.). As verb. = to cheat by short weight or measure: also ‘to defraud a person of any part of his due’ (GROSE and VAUX). SLANGING-DUES (see quot. 1785).

  1785.  GROSE, A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, s.v. SLANGING-DUES. When a man suspects that he has been curtailed of any portion of his just right, he will say, There has been SLANGING-DUES concerned.

  1851–61.  H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, II. 104. Some of the street weights, a good many of them, are SLANGS.

  5.  (old).—A beggar’s pass; a hawker’s license: any official instrument. ON THE SLANG = begging or peddling. Hence (6) a pursuit; a LAY (q.v.); a LURK (q.v.).

  1789.  G. PARKER, Life’s Painter. How do you work now? Oh, upon THE old SLANG and sometimes a little bully-prigging.

  7.  (showmen’s).—(a) A travelling show; a cheap-jack’s van; and (b) a performance; a TURN (q.v.): e.g., the first, second, or third SLANG = the first, second, or third HOUSE (q.v.), when more than one performance is given during the evening. Also THE SLANGS = (1) a collection of shows, and (2) the showman’s profession; SLANGING and SLANG-CULL (see quot. 1789); SLANG-AND-PITCHER SHOP = (1) a cheap-jack’s van, and (2) a wholesale dealer in cheap-jack wares; SLANG-TREE = (1) a stage, and (2) a trapeze: hence TO CLIMB UP THE SLANG TREE = (1) to perform, and (2) to make an exhibition of oneself.

  1789.  G. PARKER, Life’s Painter. To exhibit anything in a fair or market, such as a tall man, or a cow with two heads, that’s called SLANGING, and the exhibitor is called a SLANG-CULL.

  1851–61.  H. MAYHEW, London Labour and the London Poor, i. 353. The SLANG-COVES (the showmen) have … been refused.

  1887.  W. E. HENLEY, Villon’s Straight Tip to all Cross Coves, 2. Pad with a SLANG, or chuck a fag.

  1888.  C. G. LELAND, How Ah-Chung Got His Start in Life, in Hood’s Comic Annual, 52. There were all kinds of fakes on the SLANGS … among others, some Chinese acrobatic work.

  TO SLANG THE MAULEYS, verb. phr. (streets’).—To shake hands. [That is TO SLING (q.v.)].