Democratic Sentinel, Volume 11, Number 46, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 9 December 1887 — THE PRESENT AGE OF SLANG. [ARTICLE]

THE PRESENT AGE OF SLANG.

Horrid Expressions Which Even Our Sweet Girls Will Use. The era of slang is upon ns with a breadth that is almost appalling, says a writer in the Philadelphia Call. Not wholly the slang that might be defined as the burlesque or colloquial form of expression, the language of low humor, or the jargon of thieves and vagrants, but a species that is almost as reprehensible. It will not do to apologize for it by saying that “slang is probably as old as human speech,” and that the ear.y writers indulged in it, especially the Greek and Roman dramatists; and, while we may speak and write against the pernicious habit, we suspect that we will not grow disgusted enough with it to thoroughly uproot it until it has reached its climax. The worst fact about it is that it is not confined to the low and illiterate, but has invaded the public schools, cultured society, and the literature of our books. I admit that some of the slang expressions are forcible and full of adequateness, among which I might name “fired out,” “colossal cheek,” etc. Still, even they ought to be tabooed. But what excuse can possibly be offered for such words as “galloot, ” “sardine,” “chump,” “kicker,” “kid,” etc.? Or such expressions as “Waltzed off on his ear," “I should snicker,” “Now you’re shoutin’, ” etc. They are scarcely emphatic and certainly not polite. Even the fair sox have caught the infection and speak about his “royal nibs” or the “howling swell.” The girl of to-day is ready to “bet her bottom dollar,” wants to know “what you’re givin’ her, ” lets you know that you are “off your base,” and insists that you shall “come off,” “vamoose,” “skedaddle,” “absquatulate,” and all that. You do her a slight favor and she exclaims, “Oh, thanks, awfully!” Why she should thank you with “reverend fear” is beyond your comprehension. Ask her to sing your favorite sentimental ballad and she will probably say: “Oh, really, Mr. , I cawn’t. It’s too utterly too-too!” While playing lawn-tennis with her she suddenly cries out: “O, you’ve given me such a twist!” You feel exceedingly alarmed: you are afraid that her collar-bone is broken or that at least her wrist has been dislocated. You discover, however, that it is but tennis slang, and that your sympathy has been wasted. She confidently tells you that Jennie Somebody is ”no good,” and had the “cheek” to propose to “scratch” her at the meeting of the club, because she hadn’t “forked •over” the “spondulicks” for the last quarter. All that is to be deprecated, but the girls, heaven bless them, look so pretty, and use the term so artlessly, that I haven’t the heart to be severe in my reproof. It isn’t pleasant to be accosted by one’s 5-year-old hopeful as “an old snoozer, or to know that he is lying in wait to “knock the stuffin’ ” out of a neighbor’s boy, or to “wipe up the floor” with him. Or to hear our shortskirted but high-spirited daughter tell the aforesaid brother that she wishes the other boy would “paste him on the snoot” or “knock him clean out of the box” or “into the middle of next week.” I don’t know that I am especially sensitive, and yet I must say that such expressions send the creeps up my back. The editor “slings a nasty quill;” the hired girl is a “pot rastlerwhen a thing suits us it’s “just the cheese;” when too noisy we are told to “dry up,” or to “suspend;” when cunningly on the alert we say “not if the court iknows itself;” if one day is not available “s’mother one” is; when we die we “pass in our checks,” are “put away on ice, ” and are finally “planted. ” So I might go on ad infinitum. You can think, 1 am sure, of at least 100 words and phrases to which I have made no reference. For inventing cute words and phrases our country leads the procession. They are clever and appropriate, get into the topical song, the public “catch on,” and they live and thrive, and in many instances the dictionary finally legitimatizes them. Slang, I insist, is the fungus on the stem. It is not the grafted fruit. It is the scum of language. It often belittles; it never beautifies. If we all spoke and wrote in a less exaggerated manner we would be less exaggerated in our ways of life and thought. Life, as well as speech, would perhaps grow more simple, more true, more worth living.