2 users responded in this post

Subscribe to this post comment rss or trackback url
User Gravatar
Ros Jackson said in June 2nd, 2014 at 10:11 pm

This is incredibly useful Richard, so thanks for posting it. I’m off to check out the slang dictionary.

What I wonder is how much the slang varied over the century. Nobody says “groovy” or “hip” any more (except ironically), or even uses “bad” to mean “good” as they did in the eighties. So language evolves quickly, especially when you’re talking about slang which is designed to exclude those people not in the know. And that’s part of the point of having slang for the criminal underclass, so their targets don’t know what they’re talking about.

User Gravatar
rdenning said in June 21st, 2014 at 9:43 pm

Thanks for that. Yes I think slang does evolve at great speed – each generation certainly evolving their own special terms.