SLANDER 



5403 



SLATE 



merly a large portion was wasted, and slags 

 could often be smelted with profit. Various 

 economical uses have been found for slag. 

 When reduced to powder it is used in making 

 mortar, and that containing phosphorus makes 

 a, good fertilizer. It is also cast into blocks 

 which are used for roadbeds, and from iron 

 slag an imperfect glass is manufactured from 

 which vases and various small articles are 

 made. In Europe melted slag is used to im- 

 part a glaze to bricks. 



SLAN'DER, a story maliciously uttered 

 with the intention of injuring, or tending to 

 injure, the reputation or good name of another. 

 Written defamation of character is termed 

 libel. See LIBEL. 



SLANG, a word which originally meant the 

 jargon used by the vagabond classes, thieves, 

 beggars and tramps, to conceal their meaning 

 From other people. Authorities agree that the 

 term must be connected with the verb sling, 

 which is sometimes vulgarly used in such ex- 

 pressions as to sling language, for to abuse. 

 To-day slang, as generally understood, includes 

 colloquialisms and inelegant words, as well as 

 phrases' which have originated in the rude 

 speech of vagabonds or the uneducated classes, 

 or such words as have been intentionally per- 

 verted and given meanings which are whimsi- 

 cal, ironical or extravagantly figurative. Mere 

 dialect peculiarities or idioms of some one 

 locality or class of persons are not to be classed 

 as slang, which of its very nature is a con- 

 scious substitution of an unconventional ex- 

 pression for the formal, correct mode of speech 

 (see IDIOM). 



Not by any means is all slang vulgar in its 

 origin; much is adopted from the technical 

 language of the trades or professions and ap- 

 plied figuratively to untechnical matters. Thus, 

 the expression, "He's gone off on a sidetrack" 

 clearly came from railroading, and is figura- 

 tively applied to a deflection from the main 

 purpose. One might use the above sentence 

 without being aware that it is slang. Many 

 slang phrases are, however, taken directly 'from 

 the speech of thieves and vagabonds, and 

 carry the marks of their origin with them, and 

 are to be avoided. Such, for instance, are to 

 douse the glim for to put out the light, a cove 

 for a man, or a wipe for a handkerchief. 



Contributes to Language. There is much to 

 be said in defense of one phase of slang. 

 Every language must grow, must have new 

 words added to it and new meanings attached 

 to its old words; and of the means by which 



these changes are accomplished, slang is one 

 of the more important. Particularly does it 

 enrich the figurative side of a language, for 

 metaphor is at the. basis of most slang. To be 

 sure, a very large proportion of slang words and 

 phrases die out after a very brief existence. 

 Nothing seems more utterly dead than the slang 

 of a few years ago; but an occasional expres- 

 sion lives, rids itself of its vulgar connections, 

 and fills a place in the language which has 

 never been quite so exactly filled before. The 

 word tandem, for instance, was originally uni- 

 versity slang, and grew out of the humorous 

 application of the word, which the dictionaries 

 translate "at length," to space ideas as well as 

 time ideas. Now the colloquial significance is 

 no longer felt, and the word is regarded as cor- 

 rect literary English. Other words which have 

 had the same history are hoax, mob, blizzard, 

 humbug and gerrymander. Occasionally a 

 word which had its origin in the very lowest 

 ranks of society, among the professional 

 thieves, meets with this same fate; thus the 

 word prig, which meant a thief, has come 

 through successive changes to denote a kind of 

 person that no other word fitly describes. 



Its Dangers. On the other hand, there are 

 dangers in the habitual use of slang. These 

 words are not, for the most part, attempts to 

 supply deficiencies in the language; they are 

 revolts against propriety and purism, some- 

 times apt and striking, but as often not. In 

 either case, they tend to narrow a person's 

 vocabulary, to do away entirely with fine 

 shades of meaning. The first time anyone said 

 "That's a stunning gown," the figure was force- 

 ful and perhaps conveyed the idea better than 

 any other expression tjould have done; but if 

 "perfectly stunning" is applied to everything 

 attractive, from a salad to a Beethoven sonata, 

 the force is lost, and a number of adjectives are 

 ignored which might far more accurately ex- 

 press the pleasure received. A.MC c. 



Consult Ware's Passing English of the Vic- 

 torian Era; Farmer and Henley's Dictionary of 

 Slang, Jargon and Cant. 



SLATE. In most modern schoolhouses we 

 find blackboards of stone. They are usually 

 of a dark gray or a purplish-brown color. They 

 have a smooth, even surface and are pleasing 

 to write upon. It may be that the roof of the 

 schoolhouse is covered with the same sort of 

 stone. Thin slabs of this stone are smoothed 

 on both sides, cut into small sizes, enclosed in 

 wooden frames and sold for school children to 

 write on. This stone is slate, a rock com- 



