SLANG words or phrases---their form, pronunciation, and/or meaning---which are very informal, often temporary, and which usually start as “in-group” words.
Slang is not the same as colloquial speech. Colloquial speech includes words that are more widespread than slang, e.g. yuppie , threepeat . Words go from slang into general colloquial usage: to crash a section.
Not the same as cuss words even though they may mean similar things. Cuss words are known by everybody and last for centuries. Slang is more fleeting.
Slang is a way of dividing the insiders from the outsiders, a way for a group to separate itself linguistically from other groups
Age: each new generation sets up its own insider terms to distinguish selves from older people.
Ethnicity: African-American slang often gets coopted by other groups: Jazz, rock-androll, soul --all words that began as African-American slang.
Slang tends to be co-opted by outsiders. Take the word --Not! ad for a fax machine ends up with the boss saying "And I'm saving so much money I might start giving out a few raises -- Not!"
Its co-option by the advertising world has pretty much killed it as slang.
When a word is co-opted by too many outsiders, it may cease to function in the slang of the originators and be replaced by other words.
Slang tends to describe negative or taboo things, or extremes.
More slang words refer to women than to men.
The normal processes of word-formation are seen in slang but slang tends to be more creative : neologisms (rare)
• geek mutations :
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British slang oday < dough
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Great Britain “backslang” yob 'boy', kool toul 'look out'
• chack (an attractive girl <chick?); ho < whore---what phonological processes are involved here?

• campenile ; having an ear-gasm (meaning to flip out because someone is playing the music too loud)
• fabú ‘fabulous’ shortenings (clipping)
• hiddy (<hideous)
• def (really cool, < definitely)
• spoke ("Heck, Kristie's a spoke", short fr spoken for)
• to dis someone
• sitch for ‘situation’
• deets for ‘details’
• bringit for ‘bring it on’
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24/7 blends dimbo < dumb/dim bimbo gork < geek + dork compounds goofball, airhead, sleezebag, hobag, dorkmonger affixation :
• suffixes
-ski Let's go have a brewski
-ie hottie
-o wacko, wierdo
-rama, -o-rama ‘very, totally’
The food at my dorm is grossorama
That guy is a babeorama
• prefixes mega- ‘lots’
He's got megabucks
I'm mega-tired.
Mc- from McDonalds: ‘something cheap, mass produced, inferior quality’ -- as in McPaper
Stanford students call Cal Mc-University
• infix
English expletive insertion: fan-fuckin-tastic, kanga-bloody-roo, Phila-friggin-delphia, kinder-goddamn-garten acronyms:
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SNAG 'nice guy (like someone on 'thirtysomething' who is able to cry and takes his dates to trendy restaurants) , Sensitive New-Age Guy
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MOS 'member of opposite sex'
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SNAFU---Situation Normal All Fucked Up

borrowing
• haole 'white person' < Hawai’ian
• nark/narc 'police informer' <Romany nak 'nose'
• mush 'face' < Romany moosh 'man'
• putz around < Yiddish 'penis'
• schmuck < Yiddish 'penis'
• bob < Spanish baboso meaning ‘stupid or dumb’ What a Bob .
• a-da-li stupid He sat on a chair that had just been painted. What an a-da-li person.
"Used by Chinese people less than 50 years old. This is a direct phonetic translation. In chinese, this phrase is represented by threee characters. There is no other meaning for this phrase in Chinese, not even character by character; therefore, it has to be translated by how it is pronounced." n Chinese euphemisms & metaphors
• clapping for credit (name of easy class)
• worshipping the porcelin goddess (vomit)
• take happy Sam camping (said of a man, to have sex)
• horizontal tango
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Metaphorically relaxation is cool and drunkenness is warm or involving cooking.
Consider terms like chill out, heated, fried, cool down sound symbolism
• gak (Lemonjuice and water drink the Cal band drinks during break)
• zerbert (to blow on one's stomach with the lips to make a funny noise)
Using old words in new ways semantic changes (new meaning) :
• fresh ‘novel, good’
• bad = ‘good,’ badass, kickass = ‘very good’ (opposites)
• thick ‘curvy’ changing part of speech:
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He's so adonis !
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He's a burn out (from burned out )
• grub (on) v. < n. (I was grubbin on some pizza) puns :
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Babylon (or [beybilan]) – ‘place where babes (pretty women) come from’
• brewhaha ‘can of beer’ (short forms = brewha, haha, ha) < brouhaha, 'uproar'
Allusions, e.g. to movie/comic strip characters:
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Magoo -- person driving car slowly
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McFly -- person with no intelligence