WHAT IS SLANG?

Mataura Ensign, Volume 6, Issue 304, 9 November 1883, Page 5

WHAT IS SLANG?

. — / V+7 ' AJHow.it Starts and What makes it Successful In its best sense slang is an attempt, to get at truth :by the shorter routes/; It may npt always do this decorously, but, nonetheless, it generally manages, to get there. , Slang -is ■the-sworn enemy : of all. circuta locution and periphrasis;: It believesthatin literature, as in geometry, a straight: line is the shortest.dis-; tance betweeu two points, As it, almost invariably originat«is among.uneducated peppie this is quite: natural; It is a -tripping away of the dry husks of things to get the quicklier at the kernel.. It is an unconscious striving; to attain /to : the ; actualities and essences. •£ things^*-it is, in its . lowly, common way, a reacher after what Mr Carlyle toploftily calls the " eternal veracities." Sacc-flsful slang, that is to say slang that lives, 1 i_ always intensely hurhorous, and for that reason becomes of necessity the keenest ahd readiest weapon against all cant and hunibug, But let it be remembered there io : slang,'and wo art only r6_e-ring to -that kiid whi-h;l»eing an involuntary outcropping of the time or situation, gets a grip upon the heart of humanity, and is, in nine cases out of ten,firially feceivedinto the brotherhood of accepted words. ; At the outset it is impossible to state with certainty what will turn out to be successful slang. The immediate universality of a phrase does not settle it. To have the staying qualities elang must be anonymous. Its paternity once accurately established, it begins to dwindle* peak, and pine, and finally fades altogether. If a child has parents let them see to its welfare, but when a child has none the world itself is sometimes willing to adopt it. And this not from any pity of its helplessness, for such children a.s not seldom hardier and brighter than others, but from very admiration of their audacity and self-reliance. Of- such slang words and phrases it nay be said as of the bastard in " Lear,'' they are of that breed and blood who "in the lusty stealth of nature take more composition and fiercer quality " than ia possible to their seberer and more respectable half-brothers. Once adopted into the family, however, legitimised and made equal with the rest, they take on new airs and graces that render them infinitely more agreeable to good society, without in anywise detracting from their native vigor and flavor. It is a wild fruit grafted upon a tame atook-—if it strikes in and flourwhei, both sides are benefited and mpraved ; if it withers and dies, it .is because the grafting was: done untimely— because the sap of the cultivated tree .still boils and' f*-r_aSnts in full' and sufficient force, and ha9 not yet sunk to that dead level of placid insipidity which needs the •tinging touch of the wild infusion. Slang is the recruiting ground of language where multitudes are always : ready to enlist, and out of a profusion of tall, lawless fellows taken into the ranks, a limited number turn out in time to be good soldiers. — ' Boston Courier,'