We shall here finally very briefly consider something which plays a certain part in the development of language, but which has not been adequately dealt with in what precedes, namely, the desire to play with language. We have already met with the effects of playfulness in one of the chapters devoted to children (p. [148]): here we shall see that the same tendency is also powerful in the language of grown-up people, though most among young people. There is a certain exuberance which will not rest contented with traditional expressions, but finds amusement in the creation and propagation of new words and in attaching new meanings to old words: this is the exact opposite of that linguistic poverty which we found was at the bottom of such minimum languages as Pidgin-English. We find it in the wealth of pet-names which lovers have for each other and mothers for their children, in the nicknames of schoolboys and of ‘pals’ of later life, as well as in the perversions of ordinary words which at times become the fashion among small sets of people who are constantly thrown together and have plenty of spare time; cf. also the ‘little language’ of Swift and Stella. Most of these forms of speech have a narrow range and have only an ephemeral existence, but in the world of slang the same tendencies are constantly at work.
Slang words are often confused with vulgarisms, though the two things are really different. The vulgar tongue is a class dialect, and a vulgarism is an element of the normal speech of low-class people, just as ordinary dialect words are elements of the natural speech of peasants in one particular district; slang words, on the other hand, are words used in conscious contrast to the natural or normal speech: they can be found in all classes of society in certain moods, and on certain occasions when a speaker wants to avoid the natural or normal word because he thinks it too flat or uninteresting and wants to achieve a different effect by breaking loose from the ordinary expression. A vulgarism is what will present itself at once to the mind of a person belonging to one particular class; a slang word is something that is wilfully substituted for the first word that will present itself. The distinction will perhaps appear most clearly in the case of grammar: if a man says them boys instead of those boys, or knowed instead of knew, these are the normal forms of his language, and he knows no better, but the educated man looks down upon these forms as vulgar. Inversely, an educated man may amuse himself now and then by using forms which he perfectly well knows are not the received forms, thus wunk from wink, collode from collide, praught from preach (on the analogy of taught); “We handshook and candlestuck, as somebody said, and went to bed” (H. James). But, of course, slang is more productive in the lexical than in the grammatical portion of language. And there is something that makes it difficult in practice always to keep slang and vulgar speech apart, namely, that when a person wants to leave the beaten path of normal language he is not always particular as to the source whence he takes his unusual words, and he may therefore sometimes take a vulgar word and raise it to the dignity of a slang word.
A slang word is at first individual, but may through imitation become fashionable in certain sets; after some time it may either be accepted by everybody as part of the normal language, or else, more frequently, be so hackneyed that no one finds pleasure in using it any longer.
Slang words may first be words from the ordinary language used in a different sense, generally metaphorically. Sometimes we meet with the same figurative expression in the slang of various countries, as when the ‘head’ is termed the upper story (upper loft, upper works) in English, øverste etage in Danish, and oberstübchen in German; more often different images are chosen in different languages, as when for the same idea we have nut or chump in English and pære (‘pear’) in Danish, coco or ciboule (or boule) in French. Slang words of this character may in some instances give rise to expressions the origin of which is totally forgotten. In old slang there is an expression for the tongue, the red rag; this is shortened into the rag, and I suspect that the verb to rag, ‘to scold, rate, talk severely to’ (“of obscure origin,” NED), is simply from this substantive (cf. to jaw).
Secondly, slang words may be words of the normal language used in their ordinary signification, but more or less modified in regard to form. Thus we have many shortened forms, exam, quad, pub, for examination, quadrangle, public-house, etc. Not unfrequently the shortening process is combined with an extension, some ending being more or less arbitrarily substituted for the latter part of the word, as when football becomes footer, and Rugby football and Association football become Rugger and Socker, or when at Cambridge a freshman is called a fresher and a bedmaker a bedder.
In schoolboys’ slang (Harrow) there is an ending -agger which may be added instead of the latter part of any word; about 1885 Prince Albert Victor when at Cambridge was nicknamed the Pragger; an Agnostic was called a Nogger, etc. I strongly suspect that the word swagger is formed in the same way from swashbuckler. Another schoolboys’ ending is -g: fog, seg, lag, for ‘first, second, last,’ gag at Winchester for ‘gathering’ (a special kind of Latin exercise). Charles Lamb mentions from Christ’s Hospital crug for ‘a quarter of a loaf,’ evidently from crust; sog = sovereign, snag = snail (old), swig = swill; words like fag, peg away, and others are perhaps to be explained from the same tendency. Arnold Bennett in one of his books says of a schoolboy that his vocabulary comprised an extraordinary number of words ending in gs: foggs, seggs, for first, second, etc. It is interesting to note that in French argot there are similar endings added to more or less mutilated words: -aque, -èque, -oque (Sainéan, L’Argot ancien, 1907, 50 and especially 57).
There is also a peculiar class of roundabout expressions in which the speaker avoids the regular word, but hints at it in a covert way by using some other word, generally a proper name, which bears a resemblance to it or is derived from it, really or seemingly. Instead of saying ‘I want to go to bed,’ he will say, ‘I am for Bedfordshire,’ or in German ‘Ich gehe nach Bethlehem’ or ‘nach Bettingen,’ in Danish ‘gå til Slumstrup, Sovstrup, Hvilsted.’ Thus also ‘send a person to Birching-lane,’ i.e. to whip him, ‘he has been at Hammersmith,’ i.e. has been beaten, thrashed; ‘you are on the highway to Needham,’ i.e. on the high-road to poverty, etc. (Cf. my paper on “Punning or Allusive Phrases” in Nord. Tidsskr. f. Fil. 3 r. 9. 66.)
The language of poetry is closely related to slang, in so far as both strive to avoid commonplace and everyday expressions. The difference is that where slang looks only for the striking or unexpected expression, and therefore often is merely eccentric or funny (sometimes only would-be comic), poetry looks higher and craves abiding beauty—beauty in thought as well as beauty in form, the latter obtained, among other things, by rhythm, alliteration, rime, and harmonious variety of vowel sounds.
In some countries these forms tend to become stereotyped, and then may to some extent kill the poetic spirit, poetry becoming artificiality instead of art; the later Skaldic poetry may serve as an illustration. Where there is a strong literary tradition—and that may be found even where there is no written literature—veneration for the old literature handed down from one’s ancestors will often lead to a certain fossilization of the literary language, which becomes a shrine of archaic expressions that no one uses naturally or can master without great labour. If this state of things persists for centuries, it results in a cleavage between the spoken and the written language which cannot but have the most disastrous effects on all higher education: the conditions prevailing nowadays in Greece and in Southern India may serve as a warning. Space forbids me more than a bare mention of this topic, which would deserve a much fuller treatment; for details I may refer to K. Krumbacher, Das Problem der neugriechischen Schriftsprache, Munich, 1902 (for the other side of the case see G. N. Hatzidakis, Die Sprachfrage in Griechenland, Athens, 1905) and G. V. Ramamurti, A Memorandum on Modern Telugu, Madras, 1913.