SLANG 



Icelandic, and Bug, 'a being which terrifies'), wag 

 ! Hi:; treated as pure slang, but is now generally 

 used even by the most correct writers in ite new 

 meaning. Very little slang in the vulgar or com- 

 mon sense is to IMS fouiul in Greek or Latin (tboogfa 

 Aristophanes and Martial often approach it), or 

 in any European language until the middle ages. 

 Kianc uis Villon (loth century) wrote ballads in an 

 argil which was by far the moat copious and per- 

 fected in Europe ; a century later Martin Luther 

 compiled a dictionary of Jtotietilsch (walsch, 

 ' foreign ' or ' Italian ; ' rot being either from 

 roth, 'red,' or rotte, 'a gang'), used by the 

 thieves of his time, in which half the words are 

 Hebrew, derived from the receivers of stolen 

 goods and their Yiddish dialect. In Italy there 

 was at the same time a lingua furbescht, of which 

 a vocabulary has been published ; and in Spain 

 the Tunanestetca which was largely mixed with 

 Spanish Gypsy, itaelf a very much corrupted 

 Romany. English Canting, or the language of the 

 dangerous ana vagabond classes, which in a great 

 measure preceded all other forms of slang, did 

 not before the end of the 15th century embrace 

 more than 150 or 200 words. But as C. J. R, 

 Turner has suggested, it was the arrival of the 

 Gypsies in England alxmt 1505, speaking by 

 themselves a perfect language, which stimulated 

 the English nomads to improve their own scanty 

 jargon. According to Samuel Howlande (1610), 

 a man named Cock Lprell, who was the head of 

 all the strollers or thieves in England, observing 

 that the Gypsies were a strong race, proposed 

 union with them, the result being a congress, 

 'at which a language, or rather slanguage, was 

 deliberately constructed and adopted (Leland). 

 ' Kirst of all they think it fit to <feuise a certaine 

 kinde of Language to the End that their cousen- 

 ings, knaueries, and villainies might not lie so 

 easily perceiued" (Rowlande). The Gypsies, true 

 to their nature, cheated the English vagabonds 

 by teaching them very little of their own Indian 

 tongue. Harman, a magistrate who in 1567 first 

 published a vocabulary of Slang or Canting, 

 declares explicitly that it was only within thirty 

 years of his time of writing that the dangerous 

 classes had begun in England to use a separate 

 language at all. 



The Gypsy language, or Romany, has len greatly 

 misunderstood. It is really an Indian tongue, a 

 dialect of Urdu, or Hindustani, but very ancient. 

 A number of writers, such as Grose, the author of 

 the Life of B. M. Carew, and others, have, misled 

 by Rowlande, published vocabularies of canting 

 as ' Gypsy." Romany is, however, the corner-stone 

 of English slang, it has constantly contributed 

 new words to the latter e.g. dinner, ' a sixpence," 

 not from tano, ' small,' as Borrow declares, but from 

 the Hindu taino, ' a coin ; ' and bosh, ' mere noise, 

 nonsense.' A second element is the Celtic, which 

 has come chiefly not so much from any of the 

 leading dialects, such as Irish, Gaelic, or Welsh, 

 as from Shtlta, a language first discovered by the 

 present writer in 1876, and which has since been 

 identified by Kuno Meyer and Sampson with the 

 artificial or lost language of the Irish bards. It 

 ia still generally spoken uy tinkers, and is com- 

 mon even in London. From it we have / 

 meaning 'to go,' or ' to >rain ' (mislain). The writer 

 once met in the street in London two small English 

 boys, who spoke fluently both Romany and Shelta. 

 Shakespeare, it should be noted, makes Prince 

 Hal speak of a tinker's language. Yiddish (Ger. 

 Judisch, ' Jewish ') is a strange compound of very 

 corrupt Hebrew and ancient or provincial German, 

 spoken by the commoner Jews. Aluiut a century 

 ago a few words from it, such as tuff, ' good,' began 

 to creep into our slang. It is extensively spoken 



in the East End of London, and is constantly eon- 

 tribiiting new words to our |M>|mlar phraseology. 

 It is in Germany a language of some importance, 

 as the 'Yiddish Chrestomathy' (Leip. 1882) of Max 

 Griinluium prove*, and there are in all about twehc 

 vocabularies of it. There were at one time two 

 newspapers in London alone |nilili-he<l in Yiddish. 

 Molten was the first to show and illustrate (lie 

 curious fact that among street-musicians and 

 costermongers a very corrupt and ,-ingular form 

 of Anglo-Italian had become current. Still more 

 strangely, it has come to be considered by tramps 

 as the lowest and most vulgar means of expression. 

 The keeper of a tramps' lodging-hooM after hear- 

 ing a Cambridge professor speak Gypi-y and 

 Tinkers' Slang made no remark, but hearing him 

 speak Italian said, 'Well, I'd never a-supposed 

 you'd been down as low as that.' It occasionally 

 happens that a word in the former corresponds 

 exactly to a Gypsy term e.g. bosh, 'a noise," 'a 

 nonsense,' pani, ' water, ' char, 'a thief." 



The hutch language during the time of the 

 Georges contributed a great many words, such as 

 boffer, 'a butter ;' blink, ' to drink. ' In America a 

 still greater number was derived from this source 

 (e.g. sleigh, from sit), which have since come over 

 to England. Some confusion has resulted from the 

 fact that owing to its great resemblance to other 

 northern languages philologists have often thought 

 they had discovered in English slang words of 

 Saxon or Danish origin which were really Dutch, 

 and often Dutch slang. There still remains much 

 to be done as regards investigation in this field. 

 About the beginning of the 19th century, when there 

 was much attention paid to such subjects, and 

 many 'fast' or fashionable men affected to be 

 familiar with vulgar life, there sprang up, it is 

 said, about Leadenhall in London, and bearing 

 that name, that which was afterwards known as 

 Back-slang. This consisted of words spelled back- 

 wards, such as top for pot, yennep for penny, nig 

 for. gin. It has been dying out rapidly of late 

 years, but was at one time extensively spoken in 

 jVorfno/ or London. Many traces of it are to be 

 found in the gay novels and memoirs of the 

 ' Thirties ' and ' Forties. ' Contemporary with it as 

 regards time of origin is rhyming slang i.e. the 

 employment of a word which loses its own significa- 

 tion, taking that of another with which it rhymes. 

 Thus Lora John Russell means bustle, a canting 

 term meaning to pick pockets, also money. Ro- 

 many or Gypsy, Shelta or Tinkers' Talk, Canting 

 or Ken nick, also known at one time as Flash or 

 Thieves' Latin, and confused even by a modern 

 Oxford professor with Gypsy, form the principal 

 English slangs. All have their dialects or local 

 differences. Thus, the Shelta heard in tramps' 

 London lodging-houses is a very much corrupted 

 form of that which is spoken in Scotland. Slang 

 may consist of mere intonation or pronuncia- 

 tion: thus, Hot ten gives the use of 'Gawd,' 01 

 'Gorde,' for God, and similar errors by certain 

 clergymen as pulpit slang. There are in America 

 preachers who carry this to such an extent that 

 they have almost formed a language of their 

 own in this way ; and a certain liishnp was once 

 declared to be in the habit of saying in the 

 pulpit: 'He that hath i/nn:i to yinr, let him 

 yaw,' while in ordinary life he ejaculated plainly 

 enough : ' He that hath ears to hear, let him 

 hear!' Hotten also decjares that the peculiar 

 mispronunciation of certain names, especially in 

 good society, such as Cooper for Cow JUT, Carey 

 for Carew, Chumley for Cholmondeley. Sinjcn for 

 Saint John, is an anomaly which must correctly 

 be regarded as fashionable slang. The misuse of 

 certain French terms is also slang, which is, how- 

 ever returned a hundredfold by the rather recent 



