SLANG
The Rogue Archive
A typographic etymology of the word that names the unnamed
The Word in the Wild
Language you weren't supposed to hear
Some words describe the margins. This one was born there. "Slang" arrived in print as a whisper from the underworld—a label thieves used for their own secret tongue before lexicographers could catch it in their nets.
“The vocabulary of the streets, the cant of the canting crew”— Common parlance, 18th c.
Birth Certificate
London, 1756
A novelist—not a scholar—first wrote it down. William Toldervy, penning a story of orphans navigating London's shadows, recorded the word that would outlive his forgotten fiction. "Thomas Throw had been upon the town, knew the slang well." Eight words. An etymology begins.
The First Sighting
A novelist captures what scholars missed
Before Toldervy's orphans, no dictionary contained "slang." The word lived only in speech—passed between thieves, beggars, and those who moved through London's unmapped territories. When it finally reached paper, it meant something specific: the secret vocabulary of the criminal class. Not general informality. Not colorful speech. A code.
The Mystery
Where did this word come from?
Etymology is usually a detective story with an ending. Not here. After 250 years of scholarly attention, "slang" keeps its secrets. The leading suspect: Scandinavian languages. Norwegian has slengja (to sling) and slengjeord (slang word). But "prime suspect" isn't "convicted." The OED marks it simply: "origin unknown." Fitting, perhaps, for a word that names the ungovernable.
The Scandinavian Suspect
A theory, not a verdict
Isaac Taylor, writing in the 1860s, first made the connection: Norwegian slengja means "to sling"—to throw words carelessly. Slengjenamn: a nickname. Slengjeord: a slang word. The semantic fit is elegant. Viking-age Scandinavians settled across Britain; their words seeped into English. But evidence remains circumstantial. No document shows the transfer. The case stays open.
Criminal Beginnings
Cant, flash, and the language of the underground
Before "slang" existed, there was "cant"—the secret language of beggars and thieves documented since the 1530s. Francis Grose, a retired army captain with a taste for low company, spent nights in London's taverns collecting their vocabulary. His 1785 Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue became the Rosetta Stone of criminal speech. Entry: "SLANG. Cant language."
The Expansion
From thieves to everyone
By 1818, "slang" had escaped its criminal origins. The OED records a crucial shift: now it meant any "language of a highly colloquial type." No longer just thieves' cant—but the informal speech of soldiers, students, sailors, anyone. The word expanded to match a growing awareness: formal language was only one layer of how people actually talked.
Slang's Neighbors
A family of outsiders
"Slang" lives in a crowded neighborhood. Cant: the secret language of criminals. Argot: French term for the same. Jargon: technical vocabulary of professions. Colloquial: informal but stable. Vernacular: everyday speech of a region. Dialect: regional pronunciation and grammar. They overlap, blur, argue at the boundaries. Understanding slang means mapping this constellation.
The Neighborhood
The Collectors
Those who documented the undocumented
Francis Grose tramped through London's dangerous nights. John Camden Hotten published the first dictionary with "slang" in its title (1859). Eric Partridge made slang academically respectable (1937). Jonathon Green spent decades compiling 125,000 entries for the largest slang dictionary ever assembled. They share a mission: treating marginal language as worthy of the same scholarly care as Shakespeare.
Antiquarian and lexicographer who compiled the first major dictionary of "low" English by spending nights in London taverns with thieves and beggars.
Publisher and lexicographer who produced the first dictionary with "Slang" in its title, legitimizing the field.
Philologist and OED editor who wrote the authoritative (and judgmental) Britannica entry on slang.
Poet who championed slang as democratic expression—the "lawless germinal element" beneath all poetry.
The Judges
"A conscious offence against propriety"
Not everyone celebrated slang. Henry Bradley, writing the Encyclopædia Britannica entry in 1911, defined it as "a conscious offence against some conventional standard of propriety." The Victorians saw slang as moral failure—evidence of vulgarity, laziness, perhaps dangerous politics. To use slang was to mark yourself as outside respectable society. The gatekeepers watched, and judged.
“Slang is a conscious offence against some conventional standard of propriety.”— Henry Bradley, 1911
The Champions
"Devised by individuals of wit and ingenuity"
America inverted the judgment. Walt Whitman called slang "the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry" (1885). H.L. Mencken declared that slang "is devised not by the stupid populace, but by individuals of wit and ingenuity" (1919). What Europe called vulgar, America claimed as democratic genius—the people's poetry, made fresh.
“Slang is the lawless germinal element, below all words and sentences, and behind all poetry.”— Walt Whitman, 1885
250 Years of "Slang"
A timeline
From Harman's cant glossary (1566) through Toldervy's first attestation (1756) to Urban Dictionary (1999) and beyond—the word "slang" has traveled through criminal underworlds, scholarly dictionaries, newspaper columns, and digital platforms. Each era left its mark on what the word means and who gets to use it.
Harman's cant glossary—first documentation of criminal vocabulary
HarmanB.E.'s Canting Crew dictionary published
B.E.First verb use: "slanging" in Tyburn account
OEDFIRST NOUN ATTESTATION — Toldervy's orphans
ToldervyGrose's Vulgar Tongue published
Grose"Slang" expands to include jargon
OEDMeaning broadens to general informal speech
OEDHotten's Slang Dictionary—first with "slang" in title
HottenTaylor proposes Scandinavian etymology
TaylorWhitman's "Slang in America" essay
WhitmanBradley's Britannica definition: "conscious offence"
BradleyMencken's American Language champions slang
MenckenPartridge's Dictionary legitimizes academic study
PartridgeSociolinguistics emerges as field
LabovEble's Slang and Sociability reframes slang as solidarity
EbleUrban Dictionary founded—crowdsourced lexicography
PeckhamGreen's Dictionary: 125,000+ entries
GreenMcCulloch's Because Internet analyzes digital slang
McCullochThe Global Word
From London to everywhere
"Slang" spread with English itself. American slang diverged from British. Australian slang developed its own ecosystem. Indian English created hybrid forms. South African, Caribbean, Philippine—each variety generated its own informal vocabularies, all labeled with this once-marginal word. The term became global infrastructure for discussing how people actually talk.
The Internet Engine
When slang got velocity
The internet didn't create slang—but it accelerated everything. Words that once spread through neighborhoods now spread through platforms in hours. Urban Dictionary, founded 1999, made everyone a lexicographer. TikTok compressed the slang lifecycle from years to weeks. Gretchen McCulloch observed: "The internet didn't create new types of informal language... it made informal writing normal."
“The internet made informal writing normal.”— Gretchen McCulloch, 2019
The Half-Life
Why words burn bright, then vanish
Slang has always been ephemeral—that's part of its function. Words mark belonging to a moment, a group, a generation. When everyone's parents start saying "lit," the word dies for its creators. The internet compressed this cycle. A word can be born, peak, become cringe, and fossilize within a single year. Speed is the new secrecy.
The Rogue's Return
Language belongs to those who speak it
The word "slang" began as slang—insider vocabulary escaping into print. It named what dictionaries couldn't control, what schools couldn't standardize, what gatekeepers couldn't gate. Two hundred fifty years later, the mystery of its origin remains. And that feels right. Some words refuse to be fully documented. They belong to those who use them, not to those who define them.
“Language belongs to those who speak it.”
More Champions
The modern documentarians
Journalist and cultural critic who celebrated American slang as creative genius, not vulgarity.
New Zealand-born lexicographer who made slang study academically respectable with rigorous documentation.
Sociolinguist who reframed slang as social glue rather than linguistic decay.
Lexicographer who spent 30 years compiling the largest slang dictionary ever: 125,000+ entries.
Sources
Primary Dictionaries
- Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London, 1785.
- Hotten, John Camden. The Slang Dictionary. London, 1859.
- Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Routledge, 1937.
- Green, Jonathon. Green's Dictionary of Slang. Chambers, 2010.
Scholarly Works
- Coleman, Julie. The Life of Slang. Oxford UP, 2012.
- Eble, Connie. Slang and Sociability. UNC Press, 1996.
- McCulloch, Gretchen. Because Internet. Riverhead, 2019.
- Mencken, H.L. The American Language. Knopf, 1919.
Essays & Articles
- Whitman, Walt. “Slang in America.” North American Review, 1885.
- Bradley, Henry. “Slang.” Encyclopædia Britannica, 11th ed., 1911.
- Liberman, Anatoly. “The origin of slang.” OUP Blog, 2016.