A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant/Preface
PREFACE.
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O a very great number of respectable and by no means uneducated persons, slang is simply a collective name for vulgar expressions, the most refined individual being the one who uses it least. To them it is all that which in speech is "tabu," or forbidden. Others regard it as the jargon of thieves, which has spread to costermongers and street-arabs, though in justice to the worthy people first mentioned it must be admitted that many of them are so fortified in their ignorance of what is beneath them, that they are unaware that thieves have a lingo of their own.
Others, again, believe that it is identical with the gypsy tongue or Romany, an opinion which, in spite of its easily demonstrated etymological absurdity, has held its ground for more than a century; whilst several writers, such as the author of the "Life of Bampfield (or Bampfylde) Moore Carew," have published so-called gypsy vocabularies, in which barely half-a-dozen words of corrupt Romany are to be found.
Many, not without good excuse, find it very difficult to distinguish between technical terms not as yet recognised by lexicographers, and those which are, to all intents and purpose, firmly established.
It is worthy of notice, let it be said en passant, that the two nations at the head of the intellectual movement, England and France, have the most extensive slang vocabulary, the two being about on a par in that respect.
Now, the dialect alluded to above was, centuries ago, almost the only slang—and there are men so much behind the times that it is the only slang to them still. We put in the qualifying "almost" because there always have been certain conditions, such as emigration to savage countries, which have bred new circumstances, with a corresponding development of language. The Roman legionaries in the wilds of Gaul and Germany found classical Latin as inadequate for bush vocabulary as the Anglo-Saxon finds classical English in the backwoods of America and the backblocks of Australia, and they evolved a Low Latin slang corresponding with such terms as "warpaint," "backwoodsman," "ring-barker," "bushman," and "throwing-stick." Modern French has its elements of base Latin origin, just as the English lexicons of the future will include a number of words forged by necessity in the bush and the backwoods—in New World mines and cities—and others which at the present time are only to be found in such dictionaries as the present one.
But here, in the heart as well as at the extremities of "Anglo-Saxony," new needs and new circumstances are being developed unceasingly, and society both high and low, in every walk of life, and on bypaths of art and trade, has of late years taken to inventing new words and phrases, some for practical wants, others for amusement, some coarse and rude, others daintily cut and polished, deftly veiled—all in such profusion, that every one of the old definitions of slang is now inadequate to express the "new departure" phase of the language.
Perhaps the best general definition at which one can arrive is that "slang" is a conventional tongue with many dialects, which are as a rule unintelligible to outsiders. In one case at least it has been framed with the intention of its being intelligible only to the initiated—the vagabond and thievish fraternity.
The vocabulary is based chiefly on words of the language proper, ancient and modern (with an admixture of foreign words), which have become "slang" through a metaphoric process or misappropriation of meaning. Thus "brass," "timbers" and "pins," "red lane," "mug," "canister," "claret," "ivory," "tile," taken figuratively, enrich the slang vocabulary by respectively acquiring the conventional meaning of "impudence," "legs," "throat," "face," "head," "blood," "teeth," "hat."
It has been well said therefore that slang, in its general features, is hardly more than an arbitrary interpretation of the ordinary language. It does not suffice, however, that it should be merely conventional or figurative, else it might be multiplied ad infinitum. But being to a great degree the outcome of the humour and wit, more or less refined, of its promoters, it bears the stamp of sarcasm, of callousness, and occasionally of a grim philosophy, as, for example, when a drunkard is called a "lean away," or a man "waiting for a dead man's shoes" is said to be "shepherding" his rich relative—when a clergyman is jestingly called a "sky-pilot" or a "fire-escape"—when a man who feels beaten says that he has been "had on toast," and will "give it best."
Each profession or trade has its "lingo," not to be mistaken for technical phraseology. Thus in cricket "wickets" is technical, but "sticks" is slang; to put a "break" on a ball the former, to put "stuff" on it the latter. "Bone shaker," the old type of bicycle, is slang; but "kangaroo," the latest improvement on the spider bicycle, and which in shape somewhat resembles the primitive "bone shaker," belongs to the technical phraseology of 'cycle machinists.
It sometimes occurs that a technical word comes to be used figuratively in an humorous and sarcastic sense. Sailors talk slang when they say of a drunken man that his "mainbrace is well spliced," or that he is "two sheets in the wind."
Occasionally a class slang word is adopted by the public, and swells the vocabulary of general or "society" slang. This specially applies to nautical and sporting phraseology. Thus it is quite possible for people who do not belong to the seafaring fraternity to hear of a husband having to "look out for squalls" when he comes home "heeling over" from having dined too well, even if he has not "capsized" or been "thrown upon his beam-ends" in the gutter. And many a person when asked to contribute to a charity has declared himself "stumped," though he may never have been near a cricket-field since he left school.
What one might call the classical slang of thieves is technically termed "cant." It has the appearance of possessing more quaint and original features than the more modern lingo, the sole reason for which is perhaps that it proceeds from dialects but little known, as for instance Romany, or from Celtic and Anglo-Saxon words no longer used as language-words and known only to a few scholars.
Cant possesses but few original terms coined in a direct manner by those who employ the vocabulary, for it needs greater imaginative powers than these light-fingered professors are generally credited with to invent terms that shall remain and form part of a language. An illustration of this may be found in the French argot—taken in the narrower sense of malefactors' language and leaving out altogether the Parisian slang—which in spite of all the efforts of those interested in the matter has remained very nearly what it was in the seventeenth century.
The components have been elongated, then curtailed, then their syllables have been interverted, and finally they have reappeared under their original form.
Taking as a starting-point that slang and cant are of an essentially conventional and consequently metaphoric and figurative nature, it may safely be asserted that the origin of slang and cant terms must certainly be sought for in those old dialect words which bear a resemblance in form; not however in words which bear an approximately identical meaning, but rather in such as allow of the supposed offsprings having a figurative connection of sense.
The reader will probably best understand what is meant if he will, for the sake of argument, suppose the modern English language to have become a dead language known only to scholars. Then let him take the slang word "top-lights," meaning eyes. He is seeking the origin of top-lights. If he were to find in the old language a word having some resemblance in form and bearing the identical meaning of eyes he would have to reject it. But when he finds the same word signifying the upper lanterns of a ship, he may adopt it without hesitation, because the metaphor forms a connection link and furnishes a safe clue.
So far we have spoken rather as if slang were a kind of outlaw or Bedouin with every man's hand against it, but of late years many judicious and intelligent writers have recognised that there is a vast number of words which, while current, are still on probation, like emigrants in quarantine, awaiting the time when they are to be admitted to the regular haven of the Standard Dictionary. But this increase has been so enormous and so rapid that no standard lexicographer could do it justice. It is generally admitted that to keep pace with modern French journalism or novels, a "Dictionnaire d'Argot" is absolutely indispensable, and this is now quite as much the case with English. And when we consider that it is not possible to take up a copy of any of the leading London society journals without finding very often in one single article a dozen slang phrases which have never yet been given in any dictionary whatever, it will be admitted that a time has certainly come to publish a dictionary upon new lines in which every effort shall be made to define such expressions without regard to what the department is called to which they belong.
To show what a need there is of such a work, one only has to reflect that a vast number of more recent American slang phrases (not old English provincialisms established ab initio in New England, but those chiefly of modern Western manufacture) have never been collected and published. And the same may be said of those which have cropped up and developed themselves in the English-speaking colonies, in the bush of Australia, or South Africa. The real amount of Romany, Dutch, Celtic, and Yiddish, in the various slangs, has never yet been decided by writers who had a thorough knowledge of these languages, and Mr. Hotten, while declaring that to the gypsies we are in great measure indebted for the cant language, and that it was the corner-stone and a great part of the edifice of English slang, was still so utterly ignorant of it as to have recourse to a vocabulary of Roumanian gypsy to explain the very few words of English Romany in his work, the great majority of which were in some way erroneous. The present is the first Slang Dictionary ever written which has had the benefit of contributors who thoroughly understood Celtic dialects, Dutch, German, and French slang, and who were thus enabled to establish their relations with English cant, and one of these gentlemen is equally at home in Pidgin-English, Gypsy, and Shelta or tinker's slang, which by-the-bye is one of the three principal slangs of the kingdom, and is here made known for the first time in a work of this kind; this being also the first Slang Dictionary to which the rich and racy slang of the fifth continent—the mighty Australian commonwealth of the future—has been contributed by one long resident in the country and familiar both with its life and its literature. Information has been gathered at its very source from all classes of society, and in every department contributors have been employed who were perfectly at home in their respective specialities.
We began our preface with trying to define, or discover, the nature of that slippery Proteus, slang; after doing which to the best of our power, we proceeded to show the necessity for a dictionary such as the present, and to instance the precautions taken to make it exhaustive. We might have added that the majority of the contributors selected were men not only intimate with their subject, but also of proved ability in literature. We could hardly conclude without making some allusion to the volume which was the forerunner of this, "Argot and Slang." One passage in its preface has attracted much attention for its terse enunciation of what is generally recognised.
"Slang has invaded all classes of society, and is often used for want of terms sufficiently strong to convey the speaker's real feelings. It seems to be resorted to in order to make up for the shortcomings of a well-balanced and polished tongue which will not lend itself to exaggeration and violence of utterance. Journalists, artists, politicians, men of fashion, soldiers, even women, talk argot, sometimes unawares." A curious illustration of this has just been brought under the editor's notice. A gentleman had been publishing for some years with the same firm of publishers, but with very varying success. "I can never for the life of me," he used to complain, "tell whether Mr. Pompous means that my new book is a poor one or a bad one. His letters are tissues of under certain circumstances, we should not feel justified in advising (or not advising), in the present state of the public taste it is impossible to predict, conceivably, &c." But a year or two ago a college friend of this author became a member of this firm of publishers. In due time another book was submitted, and the answer came from the new partner— "My dear , it would be rot publishing a thing like this. The public would snort at it. Yours very truly, ." The author's confidence in his publisher went up a hundred per cent. There was now a member of the firm sufficiently intimate with him to employ "slang" in their communications, and the author knew that from that time he would be able to tell to a fraction the exact grade of value they put upon every work he offered them. "Slang" is an essential of the age. Even a bishop has used it in the pulpit, in a modified form, when he said that "Society would be impossible without white lies." It seems as if the day was not far off when it might be true to say that "Society would be impossible without slang."
One thing is certain, that the taste of the age is to learn specialities from those who have a special knowledge of them. The public that goes to see the life of the Wild West and the prize-ring, rejoice also in realistic novels by those whose special knowledge best qualifies them for the work, whether it be an uncanny familiarity with the mysteries of the Far West, or the mysteries of Paris; and these kind of works, as a rule, abound above all others in technical expressions and argot. Granted that people of the same country as the author are generally able to understand these by the context without the labour of a dictionary, a very small percentage of the intelligent foreigners who make a practice of reading English works of note could, without the aid of a vocabulary, be able to decipher the multifarious "lingos" which enter into these books, and this is just the class who will be most assisted by the arrangement adopted in this work of giving all the various departments of slang together.
A. B.