SLANG

words or phrases---their form, pronunciation, and/or meaning---which are

very informal, often temporary, and which usually start as in-group words.
Slang is not the same as colloquial speech. Colloquial speech includes words that are
more widespread than slang, e.g. yuppie, threepeat. Words go from slang into general
colloquial usage: to crash a section.
Not the same as cuss words even though they may mean similar things. Cuss words are
known by everybody and last for centuries. Slang is more fleeting.
Slang is a way of dividing the insiders from the outsiders, a way for a group to separate
itself linguistically from other groups
Age: each new generation sets up its own insider terms to distinguish selves from older
people.
Ethnicity: African-American slang often gets coopted by other groups: Jazz, rock-androll, soul --all words that began as African-American slang.

Slang tends to be co-opted by outsiders. Take the word --Not!

ad for a fax machine ends up with the boss saying "And I'm saving so much money I
might start giving out a few raises -- Not!"
Its co-option by the advertising world has pretty much killed it as slang.
When a word is co-opted by too many outsiders, it may cease to function in the slang of
the originators and be replaced by other words.
Slang tends to describe negative or taboo things, or extremes.
More slang words refer to women than to men.
The normal processes of word-formation are seen in slang but slang tends to be more
creative:
neologisms (rare)
geek
mutations:
British slang oday < dough
Great Britain backslang yob 'boy', kool toul 'look out'
chack (an attractive girl <chick?); ho < whore---what phonological processes are
involved here?

campenile; having an ear-gasm (meaning to flip out because someone is playing the
music too loud)
fab fabulous

shortenings (clipping)
hiddy (<hideous)
def (really cool, < definitely)
spoke ("Heck, Kristie's a spoke", short fr spoken for)
to dis someone
sitch for situation
deets for details
bringit for bring it on
24/7
blends
dimbo < dumb/dim bimbo
gork < geek + dork
compounds
goofball, airhead, sleezebag, hobag, dorkmonger
affixation:
suffixes
-ski Let's go have a brewski
-ie hottie
-o wacko, wierdo
-rama, -o-rama very, totally
The food at my dorm is grossorama
That guy is a babeorama
prefixes
mega- lots
He's got megabucks
I'm mega-tired.
Mc- from McDonalds: something cheap, mass
produced, inferior quality -- as in McPaper
Stanford students call Cal Mc-University
infix
English expletive insertion: fan-fuckin-tastic,
kanga-bloody-roo, Phila-friggin-delphia, kinder-goddamn-garten
acronyms:
SNAG 'nice guy (like someone on 'thirtysomething' who is able to cry and takes his
dates to trendy restaurants) , Sensitive New-Age Guy
MOS 'member of opposite sex'
SNAFU---Situation Normal All Fucked Up

borrowing
haole 'white person' < Hawaiian
nark/narc 'police informer' <Romany nak 'nose'
mush 'face' < Romany moosh 'man'
putz around < Yiddish 'penis'
schmuck < Yiddish 'penis'
bob
< Spanish baboso meaning stupid or dumb

What a Bob.

a-da-li
stupid He sat on a chair that had just been painted. What an a-da-li
person.
"Used by Chinese people less than 50 years old. This is a direct phonetic
translation. In chinese, this phrase is represented by threee characters. There is no
other meaning for this phrase in Chinese, not even character by character; therefore, it
has to be translated by how it is pronounced." n
Chinese

euphemisms & metaphors

clapping for credit (name of easy class)
worshipping the porcelin goddess (vomit)
take happy Sam camping (said of a man, to have sex)
horizontal tango
Metaphorically relaxation is cool and drunkenness is warm or involving cooking.
Consider terms like chill out, heated, fried, cool down
sound symbolism
gak (Lemonjuice and water drink the Cal band drinks during break)
zerbert (to blow on one's stomach with the lips to make a funny noise)
Using old words in new ways
semantic changes (new meaning):
fresh novel, good
bad = good, badass, kickass = very good (opposites)
thick curvy
changing part of speech:
He's so adonis!
He's a burn out (from burned out)
grub (on) v. < n. (I was grubbin on some pizza)
puns:
Babylon (or [beybilan]) place where babes (pretty women) come from
brewhaha can of beer (short forms = brewha, haha, ha) < brouhaha, 'uproar'
Allusions, e.g. to movie/comic strip characters:
Magoo -- person driving car slowly
McFly -- person with no intelligence