Democratic Sentinel, Volume 5, Number 2, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 18 February 1881 — The Uses of Slang. [ARTICLE]

The Uses of Slang.

Is “slang” always reprehensible? Let us consider what slang is. The word only marks a relative condition, like the words “dirt” and “weed.” Aristotle long ago told us that dirt was merely “matter misplaced,” and Prof. Gray, asked to define a weed, said “a flower in the wrong spot. ” So slang is merely a common word in unfamiliar relations—a w r ord plucked up by the roots and planted in a new spot. A correspondent writes us as follows: “Editor of Andrews' American Queen : * * Is it slang to say ‘ Not if I know myself ?’ ” Answei—Not if it be said seriously, though it would, perhaps, be better to say something else. John Milton said, “Not if I am acquainted with myself.” Considerable so-called slang is classic. “ Escaped with the skin of my teeth” is from Job. The phrase “he is a brick” is from Plutarch—that historian telling of a King of Sparta who boasted that his army was the only wall of the city, “ and every man is a brick.” We call an honest citizen “a square man,” but the Greeks, 2,000 years ago, described the same sort of person as “ tet-four-cornered man. Webster defines slang to t>e “low, vulgar, unmeaning language”—a definition quite too sweeping. It is often low, sometimes vulgar, but very seldom unmeaning. On the contrary, slang, being always metaphorical language, is generally compact and its meaning very clear. Its use may have originated with gypsies, or criminals in need of a disguise for their speech ; but it is not the less true that a good many of the most useful words in the language were originally slang, now adopted into the full fellowship of lingual purity. The use of the word “mob” was denounced by Addison and Swift (both of whom used some slang of their own), but we should scarcely know what to do without it. We do not, by any means, advise the young to use slang indiscriminately; they had better err in the other direction. At the same time, slang has a useful function to perform. It is the great feeder of vigorous expression ; the reservoir from which languages draw strength and keep from getting enfeebled. As enlightenment brings culture at the expense of virility, so languages always tend to diffuseness and feebleness—a tendency which slang inclines to counteract. So the use of slang, while sometimes a nuisance and sometimes disgusting, has an important office in keeping languages alive and then veins full of the blood of youth.—Andrews’ American Queen.