Show tue THE yue THE GROWTH OF SLANG A The growth of slang means the decay the admission of a nomenclature ciatu re which idia idla regards propriety and nixes fixes upon objects irrational and inconsistent names is at once a nuisance and a vice and persistence in it means the inevitable debasing of the mother tongue a course which the scholars of all ages have endeavored to check while their efm eff morts efforts were viere strenuously directed to refine renine elevate and improve there has been a growing tendency to incorporate into our alread already y too barbarous and incongruous language a flood of cant terms american colloquialisms gallicisms sham professional idioms and a general deluge of illiterate slang all this shows want not excess or of fertility and degeneration rather than extension england being an adaptive nation learns and finds a home for newfangled expressions of all sorts shielding herself when attacked on the point with the excuse that they are not of her own manufacture but the passer of bad coins is every vahit aa as guilty aa as the coiner rind find england is as us ready indorse the vulgar vocabulary as to invent for oon herself slang biang is is of very modern date dale there was much home abo little coarseness in bome some odthe of the sayings odthe of the famous writers and perhaps more facetiousness and and significance amongst our great humorists than will pe e a day days but we woe see little or sr 66 tendency tob tos to slang blang evenin the famous highway mans opera gay who should have known his bis s 48 uba subject V t gives us nothing in the cony eony conversation of his lowest characters which requires a glo gio glasar gl osar obar sarn while dean baa bad such a commodity ss za slang existed would never have omitted to garnish his words with it forthe for the good of dt posterity dictionaries of slang have been bien published since his day and the latest publication founded on groses famous book has attained to goodly dimensions mansions men for elangis slang blang is on the increase and no stand has been made against it because everybody from the highest to the lowes lowest cultivates and speaks it words which are not liot to be found in any standard dictionaries and which are dby by grammatical or lite literary bary iary precedent are slang and such words are arts used throughout the length and breadth of the land by all degrees of men indiscriminately the use of vulgar equivalents distinguishes all englishmen and it would weary our readers and certainly not enlighten them were we to treat them to a complete list corrected up to date of the synonyms for some of the generic words in commonest use for money alone there are seventeen equivalents without counting thea the slang lang terms applied to the various species of coins or the different expressions used to signify the being rich or poor As might be expected in england the symptoms for drunkenness are aro plentiful amounting to no less than thirty two and for one article of drink fruitful in producing these names namely gin we have ten diffene different nt equivalents man is liable to be called a cove a chap a cull an article a codger a buffer a party and lind according to his grade he has sole some fifty su subdivisions abdi visions accord according ing to his hie profession some eighty of or more this that we have quoted is a mere drop in the acdan merb mere casualties enumerated from memory and without the least attempt af at any exhaustive P list possibly with better knowledge we might augment the list by double the amount slang however is not concluded here low language is not alone in its I 1 argot argon I 1 fashion hag has its vulgarity and a good deal of it too as unmeaning gibberish as anything that we have given hitherto the of the fashionable slang being that i it is made up of mis construed frenc frene h idioms which in the ebi efi english glish garb are sheer nonsense euse witness a wedding oni onn ori the tapis which is twaddle the beau monde which is rub nub rubbish bisha bisba a the decante which is r rigmarole 19 a chaperon which is fool foolishness is LM to say nothing of the meaningless fri polities voli ties of such words as faux pas mes all ail alliance tance and a thousand other words falsely applied As to fashionable pronunciations which in themselves mean siang abang we take no cognizance of them they are fleeting material and aud change their aspect every day criticism has its special slang which ia Is vast vasty y offensive as being born of emptiness and arreg ance A few technical terms constitute the tche stock lil in trade of every art critic in england I 1 and fe is the tb hey key sto neof p raise or niame blame thu abr through 0 ugh all ail stations of society runs the tb elode lode of slang let our readers for a moment conceive the difficulty which presents itself ito to a fo foreigner re aglor when he he enc ene encounters aunt a master of slang what tribulation what uncertainty besets the unhappy stranger stra nger ager if the object of his inquiry is a political move he is enlightened to this effect ohl oh it was a put up thing altogether Meary pebbles is an out and out swindle and wanted to blarney dull who such as be he looks so dodging the premiers gammon h he e stowed the question and thou though he looked green did the fellow frown on his own dodge all which must be vastly instructive to the foreign politician what hope has a resident frenchman to accomplish the difficulty of our language while he is mastering one idiom another and another has appeared to his utter he finds himself fighting against a strongly running tide of blan elan slang siang which keeps him in a condition of the most hopeless perplexity Is there a reason for this thib should this be idleness sooner than use a recognized vocabulary invents one which is spurious idleness double distilled imitates this and so according to the space left jef t by weakness does the vige vice vlee gain ground Igno ignorance rafice uses slang be beca causes uses ignorance copies idleness 1 which welch Is the parent of sin co court urt circular |