Dictionary of Contemporary Slang

Introduction

How to Use this Book

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Entries with Boxed Comments

A ‘language' made up by the ignorant and illiterate who have failed at everything in life, so turn to the ‘dark side' to squeeze out a little self respect and power…hardly anything to be proud of, is it?

– Online posting by constance43, Manchester, 2012

I see slang like martial arts. So long as you have strong foundations, you are free to improvise.

– Poet Benjamin Zephaniah, 2009

This is the latest edition of a title first published in 1990 and revised and updated regularly since then. From the outset the aim of the work has been to track and record the most significant and most interesting examples of slang in English. The focus has been on the UK and that is where most of the terms have been collected, primarily by listening to what real people say and by asking them to talk about their experiences with slang and to donate authentic samples. The scope of the collection is defined by the word ‘contemporary', but what does this really mean? I have taken it to refer to language that is either in use right now or is well established in the active vocabularies of people alive today and in popular culture, even if it is no longer at the forefront of linguistic fashion.

The book uses an alphabetical dictionary format but goes beyond the remit of a traditional reference book in several ways. As well as providing definitions of slang expressions, and etymologies where these can be determined, this title offers commentaries, sometimes at length and in accessible language, on how, where and why speakers are using the terms, drawing on insights from the compiler but also the insights of slang users themselves and their friends, fellow-students, family members and others. These observations are backed up with real quotations or with illustrative phrases or sentences. Where a single term is especially significant, or where a category of slang deserves special mention, these are highlighted in the text and presented as a boxed feature with additional commentary or in the form of a mini-glossary or essay.

Given space restrictions, the new edition has dropped a number of expressions that have recently fallen out of use, or are intrinsically of little interest, but contains more than 20 per cent completely new material, mainly recorded since 2009.

It is notable that the majority of the new terms come from what can be characterised as youth slang, and it is young people who are now seen by many specialists as the most prolific originators and exchangers of slang. This is not to say that older speakers have stopped coining or using their own slang, (they, particularly if they are law enforcement officers, criminals, medical professionals, office workers, sports fans or just parents, certainly haven't) but their vocabulary tends to be more stable, to remain in currency for longer, so that expressions in these pages dated to the 1970s, '80s and '90s may still form part of the vocabulary of the middle-aged and elderly. There seems at the same time to be a tendency for those over 30 to prefer other kinds of highly colloquial language – business and lifestyle jargon and buzzwords, showbiz and media clichés and ‘journalese' (the informal, matey language of the tabloid press) – to racier, edgier slang.

I'm primarily a lexicographer, so my first priority is to record examples of language change and new vocabulary – not only slang, but those other types of nonstandard language, too. I record and collect examples of ‘lexis' (words, phrases, and longer fixed sequences of language) and analyse the way in which they are used. I do this by monitoring broadcasts, the press and the internet, but also by setting up networks of human informants; expert-users, enthusiasts and ordinary speakers who will donate samples of the language that they and their peers are using.

I have above all been inspired by the alternative Dr Johnson, Captain Francis Grose, who compiled the 1785
Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
. I have tried to emulate him, not so much in his fondness for huge meals and strong drink, but in his avoidance of print archives in favour of going out into the streets, the taverns and the barracks to record what people are actually saying. The effect of Captain Grose's 18th-century slang dictionary was not to make respectable, but at least to treat with some respect, even to celebrate, the language of the dissolute and the dispossessed. Likewise, this dictionary applies lexicographic techniques to the speech of individuals and groups who may have little prestige in society as a whole, but who in their own environments are the impresarios of speech styles, the guardians and reinventors of subcultural mystique.

The sociolinguist Michael Halliday commented that of all the socialising environments (the family, the school, the workplace) in which individuals develop their identities, the peer group is the most difficult for the researcher to penetrate. However, it is from the peer group, whether consisting of skateboarders, schoolkids or soldiers, that slang typically emerges.

It is tricky for an aged baby boomer to infiltrate these groups, to join a street gang or even to go into bars or clubs without attracting attention, but it's absolutely essential for the seeker of slang to get access to authentic samples of language – particularly spoken language – in their authentic settings, since much slang is never written down (calling into question the value of reference works based solely on printed examples) or only recorded in writing long after its first appearance. I'm not particularly interested in imitations of slang in fictional contexts such as novels or movie dialogue, and these are being tracked in any case by mainstream dictionary-makers for their own purposes using electronic scanning techniques.

Listening in on real-world conversations or spying on online messaging would be my ideal approach, but as electronic eavesdropping is not an option, most of the examples collected here have been recorded and reported by slang users and slang enthusiasts or their friends, gathered by interviews or by long-term recording of conversations in which participants gradually come to ignore the presence of the microphone. However expert the compiler, there is an obvious risk of being fed false information, so to qualify for inclusion terms must be attested by at least two separate sources. The question of whether an expression is authentic is nowadays further complicated because many speakers are familiar with online collections of slang and may adopt the items they find there, then perhaps offer them up to researchers, too.

In my experience, most slang users are not the inarticulate dupes sometimes portrayed by authority figures and conservatives (see below for more on this) but quite the opposite: they are often very adept at playing with ‘appropriacy' (linguistic jargon for using language suited to its social context), and ‘code-switching', skilfully manipulating formal, technical (at least in terms of gaming and communication hardware) and standard styles of speech as well as slang. If prompted they can often
provide insights into their own language quite as impressive as those hazarded by professional linguists or sociologists. For this reason, in the
Dictionary of Contemporary Slang
I have tried to include, in their own words, users' definitions of terms and comments on their usage as well as direct quotations – ‘citations' – from sequences of conversation or online discussions.

Slang is language deliberately selected for its striking informality and is consciously used in preference to ‘proper' speech (or, more rarely, writing). It usually originates in small social groups. For these groups, it is a private code that embodies their particular values and behaviour and reinforces their exclusivity. Slang expressions may escape the originating group and become more widely used, and although slang draws much of its effect from its novelty, some terms (
booze
,
dosh
,
cool
) may stay in the language for decades, while even supposedly shortlived youth slang, for example
peng
,
choong
or
hench
, remains in circulation for years rather than months.

This may seem a longwinded way of defining a language variety that most people think they recognise instinctively, but the neater descriptions to be found in collections of famous quotations, such as G.K. Chesterton's ‘all slang is metaphor' (much is, but not all) or Ambrose Bierce's ironic ‘the grunt of the human hog…' don't really succeed in nailing the phenomenon. Slang has also been referred to, most recently by the eminent US linguist Michael Adams, as ‘the people's poetry'. In emphasising its democratic credentials he's right, but although it does make use of poetry's rhetorical tricks (and more devices besides), poetry is allusive while slang is anything but, depending for its power on either complete, shared understanding (by insiders) or complete bafflement (on the part of outsiders).

Slang is also by definition used particularly to talk about transgressive behaviour and about activities which speakers either want to keep secret or for which there may not be an adequate vocabulary in standard language. Slang is not only used for communication purposes – to exchange data – but for social purposes to reinforce relationships: solidarity, belonging, membership of an in-group, and to exclude outsiders. This means that sometimes it is used in different ways from normal language – words and phrases may be repeated, chanted, used ungrammatically or used like slogans, for example. This can seem alien and suggest – wrongly – that the language is crude, impoverished or deficient. So nonstandard language such as slang or youth-identified vernacular is certainly part of a repertoire of performance, a pattern of behaviour which can include rebelliousness, anti-social attitudes, educational failure and even violence, crime and prejudice. It also plays an important part, though, in bonding, belonging, play and pleasure, and in constructing and negotiating individual and group identities.

More specifically, slang terms have certain recognisable functions. Firstly, like any new coinage, a slang word may fill a gap in the existing lexicon. For example, there is no single verb in standard English that defines the cancelling of a romantic tryst or social arrangement, so British adolescents adopted the words
ding
or
dingo
. To jump up and hug someone suddenly from behind is rendered much more succinct in US campus speech as the single word
glomp
. Secondly, a slang expression may be substituted for an existing term – what linguists refer to as ‘relexicalisation' –
smams
or
chebs
for breasts,
chocky
for delicious and
crepz
for shoes are recent British examples. More than one motive may be in play here: renaming something makes it yours, and makes it funnier (
Ethiopia
!) or ruder (
twatted
). Using cultural allusions
(
Hasselhoff
) demonstrates worldliness; rhyming slang (
Barack Obamas
) is not simply a useful mechanism, or a disguise, but may conceivably show solidarity with an older tradition (see below).

Slang users tend to invent many more synonyms or near-synonyms than might be thought strictly necessary: for example, criminals may have a dozen different nicknames (
leng
,
strap
,
stralley
,
tool
) for their guns, or for the police (
shpreng
,
po-po
,
feds
,
stabz
); drinkers can choose from hundreds of competing descriptions of a state of intoxication (
wankered
,
hamstered
,
langered
,
bungalowed
). This phenomenon is technically described as ‘overlexicalisation', and it happens because the words in question have an emblematic force over and above their primary meanings. Male would-be seducers or
studs
require a range of usually disparaging or patronising terms for their potential conquests (
stackage
,
blart
,
totty
,
kitty
) and more than one pet-name for their manly attributes; drug users pride themselves on being able to distinguish the nuances in different states of euphoria or intoxication; cliques and gangs enjoy inventing a host of pejorative nicknames for
negging
or
dissing
those they see as outsiders. The most significant groupings of terms in the new dictionary continue to be in the same ‘semantic fields' as before: the categories of drunkenness and druggedness, of terms of approval and enthusiasm, of insults and pejorative nicknames and of expressions relating to sex and partnership.