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Slang

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Slang is the non-standard use of words in a language and sometimes the creation of new words or importation of words from another language. Slang terms are often particular to a certain subculture, such as drug users, skateboarders, or musicians. Slang generally implies playful, informal speech.

Slang is distinct from jargon which is a collection of vocabulary specific to a profession. In some cases, slang begins as jargon. For example, phrases from theater have crossed over, such as break a leg, knock them dead (referring to the audience), or bring the house down.

Use and purpose of slang

Slang is often particular to a brief period of time, with common usage ranging from decades to only a few months. Slang widely used and understood at one time, may not have the same connotations later.

For example, a good thing may have been swell in the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s, groovy in the 1960s, and cool in the 1970s. And although the term cool may still be accepted today, swell and groovy have fallen out of favor. This fluid quality is typical of slang, since it changes more rapidly than other parts of language.

Slang is often used to with regard to semi-taboo subjects, such as

Slang terms sometimes use nonstandard spellings to give an existing word a new meaning. For example, what a youth of the 1960s might have described as groovy, a youth of 2002 might call phat.

Examples of slang

Historical examples of slang are the thieves' cant used by beggars and the underworld generally in previous centuries: a number of canting dictionaries were published.

A famous current example is Cockney rhyming slang in which, in the simplest case, a given word or phrase is replaced by another word or phrase that rhymes with it. Often the rhyming replacement is abbreviated further, making the expressions even more obscure. A new rhyme may then be introduced for the abbreviation and the process continues. Examples of rhyming slang are apples and pears for stairs and trouble (and strife) for wife. An example of truncation and replacement of rhyming slang is bottle and glass for arse (ass). This was reduced to bottle, for which the new rhyme Aristotle was found; Aristotle was then reduced to Aris for which plaster of Paris became the rhyme. This was then reduced to plaster.

Backwards slang, or Back slang, is a form of slang where words are reversed. English backwards slang tends to reverse words letter by letter while French backwards slang tends to reverse words by syllables. Verlan is a French slang, that uses backwards words, similar in its methods to the cockney back slang. Louchebem is French butcher's slang, similar to Pig latin.

Polari is an interesting mixture of Italian and Cockney back slang (i.e. common words pronounced as if spelled backwards e.g. ecaf for face, which became eek in Polari). Polari was used in London fish markets and the gay subculture in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s, becoming more widely known from its use by two camp characters, Julian and Sandy, in Round the Horne, a popular radio show.

See also

Various jargons are also loosely considered to be slang:

SEX IS FUN

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