Tag archives: slang
“The Dickens, reminiscent of Charles”: Boz and the language of hip-hop
“As the plot thickens, it gives me the dickens, reminiscent of Charles…” So unfolds the narrative in “SpottieOttieDopaliscious”, from OutKast’s 1998 album Aquemini, a cornerstone of late 90s southern hip-hop and one of my favorites. Last week, I listened to Andre utter these lyrics once again, and I wondered, what does it really mean to [...]
A look at Australian English past and present
The 26th of January is Australia Day. In this post, we look at Australian English. Professor Bruce Moore, director of the Australian National Dictionary Centre, Australian National University , has this to say about Australian English in an article on the OED website: Australian English differs from other Englishes primarily in its accent and vocabulary. [...]
The life of slang… dot com
At my son’s recent tenth birthday party, I was struck by differences in the slang used between two groups of friends from different schools. We tend to think of slang as ‘British’, ‘American’, or ‘Australian’ or perhaps as belonging to sub-groups like teenagers or rappers, but it isn’t really that simple because individual social networks [...]
A Word a Day keeps the cobwebs away
Did you know that the Oxford Language Dictionaries Online Words of the Day are handpicked by teams of editors who scour the dictionaries looking for a little quirkiness to brighten up your day? Or that you can easily sign up to receive these Words of the Day by email in French, German, Italian, Spanish, Russian, [...]
The oxygen of publicity
This Monday past, US Congressman Anthony Weiner held a press conference at which he announced that he had engaged in activities that are unlikely to assist him in furthering any political ambitions he may have. Specifically, he admitted to sending risqué photographs of himself to a number of women, some via Twitter and some via [...]
Inverted meanings: sick, bad, and wicked
A common trick of slang is to invert meanings, so that seemingly negative words are used as terms of approval. Bad and wicked are two established examples, although it may surprise you to see just how far back their positive uses go. The OED records ‘bad’ and ‘wicked’ used in a positive sense as long [...]
How to write a slang dictionary
1. Cancel your appointments ‘Have you ever thought of writing a slang dictionary,’ an editor asked in 1993 and although I had, a decade earlier, and published it, I said only, ‘Yes.’ And had a publisher. The problem, in these globalizing days, is keeping them. There would be four before the book finally appeared. I [...]
Don’t be a dag! (Learn some real Aussie English)
When Kylie Minogue used the words dag and daggy in a TV interview last year, an explanation was required: “it’s just kind of like the opposite of cool, you know?” What a perfect definition, and who better to define it than our national pop ambassador? Australian English is often mysterious when heard outside its native [...]
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