Invention of Slang

The known history of European slang begins (leaving out of account the meagre references in German documents hereafter to be mentioned) about the time of the "Ballades" of Francois Villon in the 15th century. The French argot of these compositions con tains much that is still obscure, but the origin of some of its words is evident enough. Facetious expressions relating to the destined end of the malefactor are prominent. Paroir and montjoye (for which latter the less ironical money a regret was substituted) are nicknames for the scaffold. Acollez, hanged, corresponds to the English "scragged" ; the synonymous grup seems to be an onomat opoeic formation suggestive of choking. There are some deriva tives formed with the suffix art: riflart is a police-officer, abrouart, fog. A few words from foreign languages occur : audi nos, prayer, is the Latin audi nos of the litanies; arson, bread, is obviously Greek, and its appearance in the 15th century is somewhat hard to account for. Moller, to eat, may perhaps be the Latin molere, to grind. Anse, the ear, is no doubt the Latin ansa, handle.

In Germany the word Rotwalsch (the modern Rotwelsch, still the name for the cant of vagrants) occurs as early as the middle of the 13th century. The earliest attempt at a vocabulary of "Rot welsch" is that of Gerold Edilbach, compiled about 149o. A second vocabulary, containing nearly the same set of words, is contained in the famous Liber vagatorum, first printed in 1510 in High Ger man; versions in Low German and the dialect of the Lower Rhine appeared shortly afterwards. An edition of this work printed in 1529 has a preface by Martin Luther. The most remarkable fea ture of the jargon represented in these early glossaries is the large number of Hebrew words that it contains. There are some words from Italian, as bregan, to beg, from pregare, and barlen, to speak, from parlare. The language of the gipsies seems to have con tributed nothing, nor are there any words from Latin or Greek.

Some of the words are ordinary German words used metaphori

cally, like wetterhan (weathercock) for a hat, zwicker (twitcher) for the hangman, brief (letter) for a playing-card. Others are descriptive compounds such as breitfuss (broad-foot) for a duck or goose, or derivatives formed by means of the suffixes -hart (or -art) and -ling, as grunhart (from griin, green), a field, glathart (from glatt, smooth), a table, fluckart (from Plug, flight), a bird, funckart (from funke, spark), fire, flossart (from floss, stream), water, flossling, a fish, tussling (from liissiten, to listen), the ear.

It is noteworthy that modern Dutch thieves' cant, as presented in the dictionary of I. Teirlinck, is closely similar in its principles of formation, and in many of its actual words, to that of the early German vocabularies.

The earliest English "cant" or "Pedlars' French," as exhibited in R. Copland's The Hye Waye to the Spyttel House (1517), John Awdeley's Fraternitye of Vacabondes (1561), Thomas Har man's Caueat for Commen Cursetours (1567) and various later writers, bears a close resemblance in its general character to the German Rotwelsch of the Liber vagatorum, the most noteworthy point of difference being the absence of Hebrew words.

BIBLioGRAPHY.—English: Most of the authorities for the early history of English vagrant slang are reprinted in vol. ix. of the Extra Series of the Early English Text Society, edited by E. Viles and F. J. Furnivall (1869), which contains John Awdeley's The Fraternitye of Vacabondes (from the edition of 1575), Thomas Harman's Caueat for Commen Cursetours and The Groundwork of Connycatching (anonymous, 1592), besides extracts from other early works which furnish glossaries. The Dictionary

of the Canting Crew, by B. E. (no date, but printed at the end of the 17th century ; photographic reprint by J. S. Farmer), is valuable as containing the earliest known record of many words still in use ; includes much mainly treating of thieves' and vagrants' language, it ncludes much that belongs to slang in the wider sense. Among the many later works, only the following need be mentioned here: Francis Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (3rd ed. 1796) ; The Slang Dictionary, anonymous but understood to be by the publisher, J. C. Hotten (new ed. 1874), a work of considerable merit, with an excellent bibliography ; A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon and Cant, by A. Barrere and C. G. Leland (5889) ; and Slang and its Analogues by J. S. Farmer and W. E. Henley (1890-1904), which surpasses all similar works in extent of vocabulary and abundance of illustrative matter, though the dates and even the text of the quotations are often inaccurate. A supplement to Farmer and Henley's Slang and its Analogues is J. Redding Ware's Passing English of the Victorian Era (19°9). For the slang of public schools see The Winchester Word-book, by R. G. K. Wrench (i9oi), and The Eton Glossary, by C. R. Stone (1902). For a collection of American college slang words, see H. J. Savage's College Slang Words, in Dialect Notes V. 139-148 (1922), and for a more extended bibliog raphy in general, see Kennedy's Bibliography of Writings on the English Language, pp. 419-435 (1927).

French: The earliest systematic treatment of

argot is found in La Vie genereuse des Mattois, Gueux Bohemiens et Cagoux, by Pechon de Ruby (a pseudonym), which went through several editions in the early part of the 17th century and has been reprinted in 1831 and 1868. The slang of the 15th century is discussed in Le Jargon au quinzieme siecle, by Auguste Vitu (1883), which includes an edition of the Ballades of Villon ; in Le Jargon et jobelin de F. Villon, by Lucien Schone (1887), and in L'Argot ancien (1907), and in Les Sources de l'Argot ancien (1912) by L. Sainean. Francisque Michel's Etudes de philologie comparee sur l'argot (1856) is important for its rich collection of material and its copious references to sources. Later works deserving attention are Dictionnaire de la langue verte, by Alfred Delvau (2nd ed. 1867), and Dictionnaire de l'argot, by Loredan Larchey (1889). For modern slang, taken in a very com prehensive sense, the chief authority is Lucien Rigaud, Dictiomiaire de l'argot moderne (188i). For the special slang of printers, see Eugene Boutmy, Dictionnaire de l'argot des typographes (1883). A collection of slang terms that gained currency during the Great War is contained in L. Sainean's L'Argot des Tranchies (1915).

German: An admirable collection of the original documents for the history of thieves' and vagrant slang from the earliest period has been published by F. Kluge, under the title Rotwelsch (19oI). An earlier book of great importance is by Ave-Lallemant, Das deutsche Gaunertum (1858). For modern popular slang see A. Genthe, Deutsches Slang (1892). University slang is ably treated in Deutsche Studentensprache, by F. Kluge (1895). (H. BR. ; G. P. K.)