Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/133

Rh signify a word or phrase used with a meaning not recognized in polite letters, either because it had just been invented or because it had passed out of memory. If it is true that slang had its beginning in the argot of thieves, it soon lost all association with its vulgar source, and polite slang to-day bears hardly a remote suggestion of the lingo of this disreputable class. In so short a period—but little more than a half century—has the word, as well as the thing it signifies, separated itself from its unsavory early association and worked its way up into good society.

Of slang, however, there are several kinds. There is a slang attached to certain different professions and classes of society, such as college slang, political slang and racing slang. But it must be borne in mind that this differentiation has reference to the origin of the slang in the cant of these respective professions. It is of the nature of slang to circulate more or less freely among all classes of society. Yet there are several kinds of slang corresponding to the several classes of society, such as vulgar and polite, to mention only two general classes. Now, it is true of all slang, as a rule, that it is the result of an effort to express an idea in a more vigorous, piquant and terse manner than standard usage ordinarily admits. In proof of this it will suffice to cite awfully for very, employed by every school-girl as 'awfully cute'; peach or daisy for something or some one especially attractive or admirable, as 'she's a peach'; a walk-over for any easy victory, a dead cinch for a surety, and the like. But it is not necessary to multiply examples of a mode of expression which is perfectly familiar to all. Every man's vocabulary contains slang terms and phrases, some more than others. Often the slang consists of words in good social standing which are arbitrarily misapplied. For although much current slang is of vulgar origin and bears upon its face the bend sinister of its vulgarity, still some of it is of good birth and is held in repute by writers and speakers even who are punctilious as to their English. Some slang expressions are of the nature of metaphors, and are highly figurative. Such are to kick the bucket, to pass in your checks, to hold up, to pull the wool over your eyes, to talk through your hat, to fire out, to go back on, to make yourself solid with, to have a jag on, to be loaded, to freeze on to, to freeze out, to bark up the wrong tree, don't monkey with the buzz-saw, and in the soup. But of the different kinds of slang and of its vivid and picturesque character more anon.

Let us now, after this digression as to what constitutes slang, return to the former question of the historical aspect of slang, which was engaging our consideration. Though the name is modern, slang itself is, in reality, of venerable age, and was recognized in the plebeian speech of Petronius, the Beau Brummel of Nero's time, whose 'Trimalchio's Dinner' is replete with the choicest slang of the Roman 'smart set.'