WHERE CO-EDNAS ARE HOTSYTOTSY

Evening Post, Volume CXIX, Issue 134, 8 June 1935, Page 25

WHERE CO-EDNAS ARE HOTSYTOTSY

"The popular vernaculars," wrote Pearsall Smith, "are' vast speech jungles, in which old forms are decay ing and new ones continually springing into life." Siich a speech jungle is formed by American slang, probably the richest and most colourful of all "slanguages," with the possible exception of French argot, says a writer in the "Sydney Morning Herald." A guide through the jungle is now provided by Professor Weseen's volume, "A Dictionary of American Slang," which can perform the task of informing the ignorant as to the intricacies of Americanese, or, to adopt its own idiom, of " wising the booboisie." The difficulty of "wising" us is seen by the size of this lexicon, which classifies over 13,000 words and phrases and 20 different "dialects" of various occupations and subjects, such as the slang of crooks and oil drillers, of baseball and drinking.

Carl Sandburg—who uses slang powerfully in his poetry—has well defined slang as "language that takes off its coat, spits on its hands, and goes to work." Here in the new dictionary the language is certainly in its shirtsleeves. It thus reveals a vivid picture of American life. As Eric Partridge points out in his "Slang of Today and Yesterday," slang sets forth "the social development" of a people. Could there be in any other country such an extensive slang of "bumology," for instance, devoted to "the art and practice of tramping"? In the slang of loggers and miners, railroaders, cowboys, aviators, "radiots," and, "mikesters," we find whole worlds of curious ways of thought and life. The economic strike is seen in -such a term of contempt among miners as "scissorbill" for a worker lacking in class consciousness. An American attitude towards the war is shown in the interpretation of A.E.F. (American Expeditionary Force) as "After England Failed." Social criticism is represented by "homitosis," no doubt on the analogy of "halitosis," which spurns "bad taste in house furnishings." But surely it is going a bit too far when "fight fans" are referred to in the slang of the ring as "bacteria"? Other aspects of American life as wittily seen in the term "Rentf-vated" for "divorced," "Alchohollywood," and

"outGarbo." A European epicure would shudder at the depths of gastronomy implied in the phrase for eating— "Wrestling one's hash." Drinking, of course, has always had an extensive slang, but here the number and variety of words which are rendered as "intoxicated" is really "supersnollygonchus." . ■■■

Exaggeration has always been a feature of both slang and American humour, and we can discover many examples in Professor Weseen's Dictionary, especially in sport. A one-sided game is nothing less than "carnage." A fast football is elevated to a "mer-cury-hoofed gridster." College slang is rich in phrases for the college girl, or "co-edna," who may be condemned as a "lemouette, dumb Dora, wet smack, and muddy plough," or praised as a "hotsy-totsy co-edna, sweet patootie, torrid mamma, snozzy, or pretty Genevieve." It has been well said by Earle Welby that slang is "the plain man's poetry," and American slang is full of concrete terms and striking images. "Like a bog on ice" pictures the height of independence and pride. To broadcast is "to spray the parlours," an excellent phrase. To assert with emphasis goes from "to tell the world" to the picturesque "inform the Pleiades." A gushing person is well described as an "incenseswinger." Portmanteau words are fairly frequent, good instances being "charmedian," for, a charming comiedian, "comedelirium" for a riotous comedy, and "quailure" for person who is a failure from fear. In short, whilst some of the American slang in the dictionary is strange and difficult to our ears, the majority is revealing, picturesque, racy, and expressive. Arid it might well be worth our while to stury this "slanguage," since it is such an important part of American English, and American English, according to H. L. Mencken, is spoken by at least three times as many persons as all the British forms taken together, and. by at least as many as twenty times the number who speak standard southern English. For this reason, along with its superior flexibility, intelligibility to foreigners, greater capacity for growth, and other linguistic virtues, "it will determine the future form of the English language" throughout the world.