Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 68.djvu/140

 136 and not undertake to decide which of these expressions are slang and which standard English. For it is no easy matter to trace the line of cleavage between the legitimate technicality of a given craft or profession and polite slang. For instance, are corner, bull, bear and slump, so familiar in financial parlance, mere technical phraseology or slang? How is one to classify such political terms as mugwump, buncombe, gerrymander, scalawag, henchman, log-rolling, pulling the wires, machine, slate and to take the stump? If these are mere technical terms, surely boycott, cab, humbug, boom and blizzard have passed beyond the narrow bounds of technicality and are verging on that dubious borderland between slang and standard English. Furthermore, are swell, fad, crank, spook and stogy to be considered slang or good English? Each of these terms is supported by the authority of some of our best writers. Swell, to cite only one example, is bolstered up by the authority of Thackeray, who in his 'Adventures of Philip' writes: 'They narrate to him the advent and departure of the lady in the swell carriage, the mother of the young swell with the flower in his buttonhole.' Again, how is one to regard fake, splurge, sand, swagger, blooming (idiot), to go it blind, to catch on, and that vast host of similar racy and vivid phrases which, if slang, still do duty for classic English in common parlance?

A glance at some of our slang idioms shows that they are borrowed from the cant of various crafts and callings. Some are borrowed from the technical vocabulary of the stage, some are taken over from the phraseology of sporting life, while some bear the stamp of various other vocations. Take as an illustration fake, or, better still, greenhorn, which has forced its way to recognition in standard English. At first greenhorn was applied figuratively to a cow or deer or other horned animal when its horns are immature. In the 'Towneley Mysteries' it is applied to an ox, for example. Later it was extended to signify an inexperienced person, or one who, from lack of acquaintance with the ways of the world, is easily imposed upon. The former application where the term was used in allusion to an immature horned animal is a legitimate metaphor. The latter use when applied to an inexperienced person was doubtless recognized as an extension of the metaphor and as slang. But the word filled a need in the vocabulary and was at length admitted into the guild of good usage. Another illustration is furnished by mascott, a recent importation from the French. This word originated in gambler's cant and signified a talisman, a fetish, something designed to bestow good luck upon its possessor. The term, despite its unsavory association, somehow has commended itself to popular favor and now seems not to offend the most refined taste. Slump, though not so hackneyed, may serve as an example in point also. As a provincialism this word denotes soft