slice and analyse their own supposed correct talk, and they shall be amazed at the numerous unauthorised, and what we can only call vulgar, words they continually employ. It is not the number of new words that we are ever introducing that is so reprehensible, there is not so much harm in this practice (frequently termed in books “the license of expression”) if neologisms are really required, but it is the continually encumbering of old words with fresh and strange meanings. Look at those simple and useful verbs, do, cut, go, and take, and see how they are hampered and overloaded, and then let us ask ourselves how it is that a French or German gentleman, be he ever so well educated, is continually blundering and floundering amongst our little words when trying to make himself understood in an ordinary conversation. He may have studied our language the required time, and have gone through the usual amount of “grinding,” and practised the common allotment of patience, but all to no purpose as far as accuracy is concerned. I am aware that most new words are generally regarded as Slang, although afterwards they may become useful and respectable additions to our standard dictionaries. Jabber and HOAX were Slang and Cant terms in Swift’s time; so indeed were MOB and SHAM.43 Words directly from the Latin and Greek, and Carlyleisms, are allowed by an indulgent public to pass and take their places in books. Sound contributes many Slang words – a source that etymologists too frequently overlook. Nothing pleases an ignorant person more than a high-sounding term “full of fury.” How melodious and drum-like are those vulgar coruscations RUMBUMPTIOUS, SLANTINGDICULAR, SPLENDIFEROUS, RUMBUSTIOUS, and FERRICADOUZER. What a “pull” the sharp-nosed lodging-house keeper thinks she has over her victims if she can but hurl such testimonies of a liberal education at them when they are disputing her charges, and threatening to ABSQUATULATE! In the United States the vulgar-genteel even excel the poor “stuck-up” Cockneys in their formation of a native fashionable language. How charming to a refined ear are ABSKIZE, CATAWAMPOUSLY, EXFLUNCTIFY, OBSCUTE, KESLOSH, KESOUSE, KESWOLLOP, and KEWHOLLUX! Vulgar words representing action and brisk movement often owe their origin to sound. Mispronunciation, too, is another great source of vulgar or slang words – RAMSHACKLE, SHACKLY, NARY-ONE for neither, or neither one, OTTOMY for anatomy, RENCH for rinse, are specimens. The commonalty dislike frequently occurring words difficult of pronunciation, and so we have the street abridgments of BIMEBY for by and by, CAZE for because, GIN for given, HANKERCHER for handkerchief, RUMATIZ for rheumatism, BACKY for tobacco, and many others, not perhaps Slang, but certainly all vulgarisms. Archbishop Whately, in his interesting Remains of Bishop Copleston, has inserted a leaf from the Bishop’s note-book on the popular corruption of names, mentioning among others KICKSHAWS, as from the French, quelques choses; BEEFEATER, the lubberly guardian of royalty in a procession, and the supposed devourer of enormous beefsteaks, as but a vulgar pronunciation of the French, buffetier; and GEORGE and CANNON, the sign of a public-house, as nothing but a corruption (although so soon!) of the popular premier of the last generation, George Canning. Literature has its Slang terms; and the desire on the part of writers to say funny and startling things in a novel and curious way (the late Household Words,44 for instance), contributes many unauthorised words to the great stock of Slang.
Fashionable, or Upper-class Slang, is of several varieties. There is the Belgravian, military and naval, parliamentary, dandy, and the reunion and visiting Slang. Concerning the Slang of the fashionable world, a writer in Household Words curiously, but not altogether truthfully, remarks, that it is mostly imported from France; and that an unmeaning gibberish of Gallicisms runs through English fashionable conversation, and fashionable novels, and accounts of fashionable parties in the fashionable newspapers. Yet, ludicrously enough, immediately the fashionable magnates of England seize on any French idiom, the French themselves not only universally abandon it to us, but positively repudiate it altogether from their idiomatic vocabulary. If you were to tell a well-bred Frenchman that such and such an aristocratic marriage was on the tapis, he would stare with astonishment, and look down on the carpet in the startled endeavour to find a marriage in so unusual a place. If you were to talk to him of the beau monde, he would imagine you meant the world which God made, not half-a-dozen streets and squares between Hyde Park Corner and Chelsea Bun House. The thé dansante45 would be completely inexplicable to him. If you were to point out to him the Dowager Lady Grimguffin acting as chaperon to Lady Amanda Creamville, he would imagine you were referring to the petit Chaperon rouge– to little Red Riding Hood. He might just understand what was meant by vis-a-vis, entremets, and some others of the flying horde of frivolous little foreign slangisms hovering about fashionable cookery and fashionable furniture; but three-fourths of them would seem to him as barbarous French provincialisms, or, at best, but as antiquated and obsolete expressions, picked out of the letters of Mademoiselle Scuderi, or the tales of Crebillon the “younger.” Servants, too, appropriate the scraps of French conversation which fall from their masters’ guests at the dinner table, and forthwith in the world of flunkeydom the word “know” is disused, and the lady’s maid, in doubt on a particular point, asks John whether or no he SAVEYS it?46 What, too, can be more abominable than that heartless piece of fashionable newspaper Slang, regularly employed when speaking of the successful courtship of young people in the fashionable world: —
Marriage in high life. – We understand that a marriage is ARRANGED (!) betwixt the Lady, &c. &c., and the Honourable, &c. &c.
Arranged! Is that cold-blooded Smithfield or Mark-lane term for a sale or a purchase the proper word to express the hopeful, joyous, golden union of young and trustful hearts? Which is the proper way to pronounce the names of great people, and what the correct authority? Lord Cowper, we are often assured, is Lord Cooper– on this principle Lord Cowley would certainly be Lord Cooley– and Mr. Carew, we are told, should be Mr. Carey, Ponsonby should be Punsunby, Eyre should he Aire, Cholmondeley should be Chumley, St. John Singen, Majoribanks Marshbanks, Derby Darby (its ancient pronunciation), and Powell should always be Poel. I don’t know that these lofty persons have as much cause to complain of the illiberality of fate in giving them disagreeable names as did the celebrated Psyche (as she was termed by Tom Moore), whose original name, through her husband, was Teague, but which was afterwards altered to Tighe.
Parliamentary Slang, excepting a few peculiar terms connected with “the House” (scarcely Slang, I suppose), is mainly composed of fashionable, literary, and learned Slang. When members, however, get excited and wish to be forcible, they are often not very particular which of the street terms they select, providing it carries, as good old Dr. South said, plenty of wild-fire in it. Sir Hugh Cairns very lately spoke of “that homely but expressive phrase, DODGE.” Out of “the House,” several Slang terms are used in connection with Parliament or members of Parliament. If Lord Palmerston is known by name to the tribes of the Caucasus and Asia Minor as a great foreign diplomatist, when the name of our Queen Victoria is an unknown title to the inhabitants of those parts – as was stated in the Times a short time ago, – I have only to remark that amongst the costers and the wild inhabitants of the streets he is better known as PAM. I have often heard the cabmen on the “ranks” in Piccadilly remark of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer, when he has been going from his residence at Grosvenor Gate, to Derby House in St. James’s Square, – “hollo, there! de yer see old DIZZY doing a stump?” A PLUMPER is a single vote at an election, – not a SPLIT-TICKET; and electors who have occupied a house, no matter how small, and boiled a pot in it, thus qualifying themselves for voting, are termed POT-WOLLOPERS. A quiet WALK OVER is a re-election without opposition and much cost. A CAUCUS meeting refers to the private assembling of politicians before an election, when candidates are chosen and measures of action agreed upon. The term comes from America. A JOB, in political phraseology, is a government office or contract obtained by secret influence or favouritism. Only the other day the Times spoke of “the patriotic member of Parliament POTTED OUT in a dusty little lodging somewhere about Bury-street.” The term QUOCKERWODGER, although referring to a wooden toy figure which jerks its limbs about when pulled by a string, has been supplemented
It is rather singular that this popular journal should have contained a long article on
The writer is quite correct in instancing this piece of fashionable twaddle. The mongrel formation is exceedingly amusing to a polite Parisian.
Savez vous cela?
