SLANG DICTIONARIES:
MIRRORING OUR FLEXIBLE USE OF LANGUAGE
EVA HARDCASTLE
ENGLISH 218
PROFESSOR MARINO
APRIL 22, 2006
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SLANG DICTIONARIES:
MIRRORING OUR FLEXIBLE USE OF LANGUAGE
The reference section of every library contains one or more slang dictionaries.1 At
first it is puzzling to consider why there are slang dictionaries and how they are used.
People who use slang do not get it out of a slang dictionary, do not check the spelling of
slang, and do not look up the meaning of an unfamiliar slang expression they may hear
used by a friend or coworker. Close examination of slang dictionaries, however, suggests
that these works reflect the flexible ways people shift back and forth between informal
and formal speech. On one hand, we often communicate in a standardized way, so we
can be clearly understood and can successfully fit into the larger society. On the other
hand, we often talk in many diverse and free-style ways, so we can express our
individuality and belong to various sub-groups within society. Slang dictionaries convey
the message that both types of speech have validity and historical interest.
Slang exists largely in relation to what it is not—it is not Standard English. James
Stalker makes this point as he summarizes colleagues’ attempts to date the beginning of
slang:
Lighter (1994) maintains that we cannot really label words as being slang before c.
1660, the Restoration period, because “standard” English did not exist before that
time, hence the concept of slang could not exist before that time, although cant,
criminal jargon, could. Partridge (1954) seems to agree. Slang arose as a response
to Standard.2
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In-group slang is informal, irreverent, and edgy, while Standard English is formal,
respectful, and mainstream. Slang dictionaries make these distinctions clear, neatly
translating slang into Standard English and highlighting the difference between the two in
a non-judgmental way.
These dictionaries let a reader know, for instance, that in Australia narky means
“upset,” that in the Royal Air Force pukka gen means “trustworthy information,” or that
in England in 1811 Pompkin meant “A man or woman of Boston in America; from the
number of pompkins raised and eaten by the people of that country.”3 With slang words
and their definitions each presented in this straightforward, neutral manner, it is easy to
see both as valid ways of expressing oneself. Which you use depends on your choices,
aims, priorities, audience, time period, and context.4
Interestingly, many people have always felt strongly that Standard English needs
to be championed as the only way to communicate. Other people have always felt
equally strongly that English must be appreciated and preserved in all its natural
exuberance and variety. Tom McArthur, a scholar of global English, writes, for instance,
about early “dialectologists,” who “pursued their cataloging and commentary under the
vast shadow of standardization . . . and so worked with a sense of urgency.”5 Clearly
slang dictionary writers are more aligned with this second group, valuing slang’s
idiosyncrasies. But slang dictionary writers also approve highly of Standard English, as
found in their prefaces and definitions. Both slang and Standard English have their place,
slang dictionaries seem to say, and are worthy of attention and preservation.6
In Democratic Eloquence, Kenneth Cmiel considers how nineteenth-century
citizens of America wrestled with slang, “the riff-raff of language.”7 Americans were
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famous for being able to use language in colorful, casual ways, but they actively
questioned the role of slang in a democracy. They wondered whether slang was a good
thing, embodying friendliness, independence, self-confidence, and a democratic disregard
for class distinctions, or a bad thing, indicating boorishness, low sensibility, incivility,
poor education, and an embarrassing lack of culture and refinement? Or both? People
were ambivalent, in other words. Cmiel writes:
Americans were pulled in contradictory directions. The new expressive decorum
encouraged informal speech, and slang, dialect, and familiarity all contributed to
moments of egalitarianism. Popular education, however, encouraged refined and
elegant prose. 8
Cmiel follows the debate in newspapers, grammar guides, speeches, and
dictionaries of the day. In the mid-nineteenth century, regular dictionaries condemned
slang as vulgar and low, leaving most of it entirely out. By the 1880s and into the
twentieth century, not only do more slang dictionaries appear, but the next generation of
general dictionaries includes more slang words. As the editors of Funk and Wagnell’s
Standard (1890) put it in their preface to their new edition: “The question that should
control the lexicographer is not, should the word be in the English language? But is it?”9
Expressing this non-judgmental philosophy, long, new, academic-style slang dictionaries
appear. They document in great detail that people in all walks of life and occupations use
slang sometimes and that a person sometimes talks freely or rudely, sometimes more
delicately. For example, in one slang dictionary is the slang expression—“Blue o’clock in
the morning,” followed by the definition—“Pre-dawn, when black sky gives way to
purple. Suggestive of rollicking late hours.”10 Both parts of this entry seem like fine uses
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of language, and the mind goes happily back and forth between them. That back-andforth mirrors how we vary our mode of communication according to mood, audience, and
situation.
So, finally, what is the purpose of slang dictionaries? Some slang dictionary
prefaces say that their purpose is to preserve a national language and national pride.11
Some say their purpose is to “help ESL students learn informal English as it is spoken or
heard on TV.”12 Some dictionaries of technical terms such as computer slang can have a
practical, job-training aspect.13 But mostly slang dictionaries seem to celebrate the
quirkiness of slang. They present old slang, such as frisk for search or racket for noise
(both from c. 1780) and newer slang, such as 24/7 for constantly (from c. 2000), and in
the process make clear that people move easily back and forth between the slang and
Standard English, usually without any dictionary at all.
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NOTES
1. Examples include Eric Partridge, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional
English., 7th ed.., ed. Paul Beale (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1984); Harold
Wentworth and Stewart Berg Flexner, Dictionary of American Slang (New York:
Crowell, 1975); Jonathan Lighter, Random House Historical Dictionary of American
Slang, 2 vols. (New York: Random House, 1994-97).
2. James C. Stalker, “Slang Is Not Novel,” paper presented at a meeting of the
American Association for Applied Linguistics, Long Beach, California, 1995, 8, ERIC,
ED 392 251.
3. Pete Alfano, “Australian for Olympics,” Fort Worth Star Telegram, 10
September 2000, Sports, p. 13; Eric Partridge, Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional
English, 5th edition (New York: Macmillan, 1961), 1103; Francis Grose, Lexicon
Balatronicum: A Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang,
University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence (London: Jones, 1811; reprint, Chicago:
Follett, 1971).
4. This concept is discussed in Harvey Daniels, Famous Last Words: The
American Language Crisis Reconsidered (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press,
1983), 68. In his chapter “Nine Ideas about Language,” Idea 5 is, “Speakers of all
languages employ a range of styles and a set of subdialects or jargons.”
5. Tom McArthur, The English Languages (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge
University Press, 1998), xiv. See also Tom McArthur, Living Words: Language,
Lexicography, and the Knowledge Revolution (Exeter: University of Exeter Press, 1998),
37. Here McArthur calls the pro-diversity group “permissivists.”
6. In an interview (Janny Scott, “That All-American Dictionary Adds an AllAmerican Coach,” New York Times, 19 August 2000, sec. A, p. 1), dictionary editor Jesse
Sheidlower echoes this point: “You can be interested in slang or dialect or things that
people call ungrammatical, but still think that there is a formal way of speech. . . Our
entire conversation has been conducted in a relatively formal standard English despite the
fact that I know a lot of words that will make people’s hair crawl.”
7. Kenneth Cmiel, Democratic Eloquence: The Fight over Popular Speech in
Nineteenth-Century America (New York: William Morrow, 1990), 127-8.
8. Ibid., 90.
9. Quoted in Cmiel, 224.
10. J. Redding Ware, Passing English of the Victorian Era: A Dictionary of
Heterodox English, Slang, and Phrase (London: Routledge, 1909), 38.
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11. S. B. Flexner, introduction to Wentworth and Flexner, DAS, viii.
12. David Burke, Street Talk: Slang Used in Popular American Television Shows
(Berkeley: Optima, 1992), viii.
13. See, for examples, Constance Hale, ed. Wired Style: Principles of English
Usage in the Digital Age (San Francisco: Hard Wired Books, 1996), 35-58; and
University of Wisconsin—Platteville, “Computer Slang Glossary”; available from
http://www.uwplatt.edu/~disted/general/glossary.htm (accessed February 20, 2006).
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