At 09:01 AM 7/17/2005, you wrote:
At 10:26 AM -0400 7/17/05, Andrew Stiller wrote:
Beggin' your pardon, but that word is not slang. Here's how my dictionary
defines slang: 1) A kind of language esp. occurring in casual or playful
speech, usu. made up of short-lived coinages and figures of speech
*deliberately used in place of standard terms* [emphasis mine] for
effects such as raciness, humor, or irreverence. 2) Language peculiar to
a group; argot or jargon.
Thank you for damping the rampant speculation, Andrew. Looking for
logical precursors is a lost cause. The key words above are
"short-lived." The typical slang term has a half-life ranging from about a
month to as much as a decade, depending on how overused it becomes by
those in popular culture. Slang from the 1920s and '30s sounds dated and
archaic today as, indeed, does much of the slang from the 60s.
Slang terms spontaneously erupt among "in-group" members who want to be
distinguished from "non-in-group" individuals as being "hip" (late '40s as
in "I'm hip," meaning "I'm an insider" or "I understand"; morphed into
"hep" in the late '50s, back into "hip" in the '60s, at least in the USAF
Band). Slang can be associated with geography and stereotypes ("fer
sure"--California airheads), with social class ("motha," which is actually
half the original word!), or with small in-groups. In the USAF band in
the late '50s, one's instrument was referred to as one's "axe" for no
discernable reason, and then "axe" came also to mean a stool (and I DON'T
mean the kind you sit on!), as in "I have to drop an axe."
It's typical for slang to become so overused that the original in-group
will no longer have anything to do with it--"it ain't hip." One phrase
that's reaching that point is "My bad," which I assume comes from some TV
show that I don't watch. I've never heard the terms "phat" or "fly"
Surely you remember Isaac Hayes and "Super Fly?"
Ken
with whatever meanings the rest of you attribute to them, so I'm
definitely less hip than Crystal's teenagers, and I'm certainly not ready
to come to terms with "bling bling" (which sounds like a fast-food
commercial!!--or am I thinking of "ka-ching"!).
The F word (not to set off anybody's spam filters) is in fact standard
English. All it's numerous synonyms are either euphemisms, technical
jargon, or--slang.
Anglo-Saxon, n'est-çe pas?
John
--
John & Susie Howell
Virginia Tech Department of Music
Blacksburg, Virginia, U.S.A 24061-0240
Vox (540) 231-8411 Fax (540) 231-5034
(mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED])
http://www.music.vt.edu/faculty/howell/howell.html
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