Slang sneaking into the language

What was considered slang or technical a hundred years ago may be considered mainstream or merely informal these days, as Erin McKean says in this article, Out of the Gutter, published in the Boston Globe (beware, there are some very annoying pop-ups on the page). Some examples are bogus, wallop, flummox and lambast(e). Calorie, fallout and acid test were once little heard outside scientific contexts.

 

Erin McKean reviews two new books of words in this article. The first has a new title -- The First English Dictionary of Slang, 1699 -- but the contents are those of the original book entitled A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew (the canting crew included 'gypsies, beggars, thieves and cheats'). Some of the 'terms' are now obsolete eg mulligrubs (a counterfeit fit of the sullens) and dimber-cove (a pretty fellow), while some are familiar eg defunct, elbow-grease and hick.

 

The second book is completely up to the minute; it's Virtual Words by Jonathon Keats, and is more of a discursive account of new words rather than a dictionary. Words that appear include steampunk (science fiction with a Victorian bent) and exopolitics (diplomatic relations with life forms from other planets).

 

Here's the full article, but be warned - there are annoying pop-ups.

Comments

[Licia]

In a 2000 article, Meyer and Mackintosh* coined the term de-terminologization to describe the process by which “a lexical item that was once confined to a fixed meaning within a specialized domain is taken up in general language”. Examples of de-terminologization include virtual, recycle, anorexic, multitasking, stand-alone, bandwidth, mega, the verbs flatline and bookmark etc.

* I. Meyer and K. Mackintosh, “When terms move into our everyday lives: An overview of de-terminologization” (2000), http://www.benjamins.com/cgi-bin/t_articles.cgi?bookid=TERM%206%3A1&artid=838010792

[Virtual Linguist]

Thanks, Licia. I'll remember that.