AMERICAN SLANG

Greymouth Evening Star, 31 May 1935, Page 10

AMERICAN SLANG

“WISING THE BOOBOISIE.” “The popular vernaculars,” wrote Pearsall Smith, “are vast speech jungles, in which old forms are decaying and new ones continually springing into life.” Such a speech jungle is formed by American slang, probably the richest and most colourful of all “slanguages,” with the possible exception of French argot. 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 to 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, cf baseball and drinking. Earlier books which dealt with the development ol special language forms in the United States were much smaller in

scope. John Pickering’s “Vocabulary,” which appeared in 1816 and was the first of its type, contained only 500 words, and Elwyn’s “Glossary” (1859) only 460. Even larger works, such as Bartlett’s “Dictionary of Americanisms,” published in 1848, only runs to 5600 expressions. The earlier lexicons of “Americanisms”

contained little slang, most of the words chronicled being provincialisms which come under the heading of dialect. Some of these words still occur in Weseen, but have changed their meaning. ‘‘Shadbelly,” for instance, which appears in Clapin’s ‘New Dictionary of Americanisms'’ as meaning a Quaker, now means a poor horse. We can hardly expect these days to find such old expressions as “to wind up one’s worsted,” meaning “to give the last turn of which an undertaking is capable.” More typical is “to hop the last rattler” as hoboes slang for “to die.” Compared with other compilations of the same type. including Howard Rose’s ‘ hesaurus of Slang,” ProfessorWeseen is comprehensive and up to date. On the whole, his classification serves its purpose well, although tanuliar Biblical .phrases such as “by .the skin of one’s teeth” are English idioms rather than American slang, and there is no excuse for ranking under slang certain correct technical terms of sport, such as “footfault” of tenuis, and “medley team” of athletics.

BUMOLOGY AND lIOMITOSIS. Carl Sandburg—who uses slaug powerfully in bis poetry—has well denned slang as “language that takes off Us coat, spits on its bands, and goes to work. ' Hero in the new dictionary the language is certainly in its shirtsleeves. It thus ieveals a vivid picture o. American life. As Eric Partridge points out in his “Slang of Today and Jesterday,” slang sets forth the social development” of a people ?neh d nn her °? C o(ber co ’'ntrv Cloev” fr> CXt - Cn ? Vti S,aDg of *‘bumart n’na I “ stauce - devoted to “the art and practice of tramping”? Jn the slang of loggers and miners, rail•iml C °? Vbo ?: S ’ aviatnrs ’ “nuliois” nf • kCS t ‘ rH> " C ,ind "hole worlds cunous ways of thought and life Lrn. n°f nOnll f StrifC iS secn in SlJf> h 'i trim of contempt among miner.-, :tq scissor bi 11 ior a worker lacking iu

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 rei presented by “homitosis,” no doubt on the analogy of “halitosis,” which 1 spurns “bad taste in house furnish- ' ings.” \ But surely it is going a bit too far when “fight tans’ ’are referred to in. the slang of the ring as “bacteria”? ’ Other aspects of American life are wittily seen in the term “Reno-vated” for “divorced,” “Alcohollywood,” and “out Garbo. 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 ‘sqpersnolly-gonchus.’ How many Australians would know these: “methoddistconated, shellacked, scammeied, rosined, swacked, and whipsey?” HOTSY-TOTSY CO-EDNAS. •Dxaggeiation has always been a feature of both slang and American humour, and we can discover many examples in Professor Weseen’s Dic-

tionary, especially in sport. A onesided game is nothing less than “carnage.” A fast footballer is elevated to a “mercury-hoofed gridster ” College slang is a s rich in phrases for the college girl, or “co-edna,” who

may tie condemned as a “lemonette, dumb Dora, wet smack, and muddy blow,” or praised as a “hotsy-totsy coedna, sweet patootie, torrid mamma, snozzj7 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 hog on ice” pictures the height of independence and pride. To broadcast is ‘to spray the parlours,” an excellent phrase. r r o assert with emphasis goes from “to tell the world” to the picturesque “inform the Pleiades.” A

gusiiing person is well described as an incense-swinger.” Portmanteau words aie lairly frequent, good instances being charmedian,” lor a charming comedian, “comedelii ium” for a riotous comedy, and “quailtire” for a perton who is a failure from fear, in short, whilst some of the American a i? ? le dietionar y strange and ciitticult to our ears, the majority is revealing picturesque, racy, and ex- *? K 1 iL nil ’ sht well be wor th 3 11 to study this “slanguage,” since it. is such an important part of LnSi^ U En f llsh ’ ilud American Lnglrnh, according to JI. L. Mencken

is spoken by at least three times as n<’ny persons as all the British forms taken together, and by at least as many as twenty times the number who Mmak standard southern English For bis reason, along with its superior tobihty. intelligibility to foreigne r C:, ‘ ,aC ! ty ffrowt{l ’ andothem guis ic vntues, “it wiII determine he future lorni of the English language throughout the world if <ii Mencken is a true prophei Austin ha. may yet. be waking up to tind that all is not quite “skookum” and With it., -w cll of