ENGLISH SLANG

Hokitika Guardian, 1 April 1933, Page 6

ENGLISH SLANG

BORROWINGS FROM THE: PAST.

There is more than meets the ear in the -i meticai us ms -which are heard in AUotu.lia, New Zealand, and other parts of the Empire since the “talkies” and the tourists began to circulate. MOst -peonwho use such e-tprtssioiis as “0.K.” “-Sea you,” “Oh yeah,” and “Say Buddy,” cherish the fond belief that their ..colloquial language .bears the hall-mark of the United States \writes Marjorie Burges in the Melbourne Argus Supplement). Eet many Americanisms regarded as pure slang to-day are but words and terms in common use 300 and 400 -yci.vrs ago, or arc slang terms from the cant of thieves and vagrants surviving or revived in America and repatriated.

Such expressions as “hick,” “flapjack,” and “greenhorn”' were in regular use before the New World was thought of. Shakespeare and his contemporaries employed .many of the meat modern Americanisms. “Fall,” .for autumn, “hub” for hoy. “to guess,” for to suppose, “homely,” meaning .plain-looking; “plumb crazy” and “mad” for angry, are all vepy ancient ■English. Some of these terms were introduced into America by the early emigrants; others have been revived in recent years. ■

A great number of English slang terms of the 17th. and 18th. centuries have been taken-into American slang, and thence -re-introduced into the English slang of to-day, “Rhino,” .'.tor money, and “to- sneak” for to -steal were slang terms of the 17th. century; “-.-Aiinc” or “moonshine” • for spirits—which has -provided the American verb “1° moonshine”—was old English and Scottish 'border slang for liquor smuggled at night. “Queer” 1 was Used in the American sense of crooked or bad as early as 1530. American tramps and vagabonds call- Monday “Execution Dry,” the day when' the washing is “hung” ; the same ex-, pression was used in the English slang of the 18th. century. Apart- from the commoner terms now fairly widespread by the agency of American films, such as “hoodlum,” “joint,” “stunt,” “elevator,”. “dough,” “graft,” end “bluff,” the- United ■States .has added to slang a great., many noun compounds and verb constructions .which arc .picturesque, hu-. morons or daring; ‘joy-ride,” “jayvjlMkci'.',” “forme-up,”' “rimicd/l-owa,” “back-number,” “lounge-lizard,” “soli-, sister.,” and “stag-nnrtv,,” ; ej;c- . ainple-s. “To heat it,” “to light-out,” and “to make tracks,” are feirly* e-a-s-• ily recognised as Americanisms;. “to fill the hill,” “to know the ropes,” “to fizzle out,” are also American im-: migrants.

Th 0 origin of the -ejaculation “O.K” has been .much debated. It, has b con said to bp derived" ‘from the cockney rendering of “All co.r vectV—;‘‘Orl to be- ;a.slang term ; but this .theory '.M discountenanced by 'the "fact"that ;jt avrV" emr-' pl-oy.ed in America in 1790 by the Indians. The .history -of another familiar phrase, “to talk bunkum,” goes -back 'to the same -date. l>mieomb.e County, North -Carolina (U-S-A.), was named after Colonel Edward Buncombe in 1791. In 1851 the member from (Buncombe made a speech .in'Cohr gress of such length and dryness .that many departed in th e middle of it. The speaker announced that Ix 3 world b e quite-Trappy to -see the others, follow thi s example, -as he -had . much more to say, but was only talking for Buncombe, to satisfy has constituents.

An American is betrayed ‘by his pronunciation -of the vowel rounds and other tricks of .speech; but tli e Briton is just as easily trapped .in New flTork even when he has endeavoured to :ac. quir P <a passable American accent as a disguise to his. naturally different, voice—by the pitfalls of ...vocabulary. No amount of Hollywood slang ano nasal pronunciation will save .him ifj he does not realise the essential difference between English and American, which is not English, although it is .derived mainly from the speech of England. Re lias to remember, for-in-stance, that there are no lifts, only elevators; no pavements, but sidewalks, n 0 pc s t, only a mail; ,no flats; but apartments ; he will hive to fasten not his .socks but his troupers. by moans of suspenders ; bracer s are -not, garters will have to serve. -Some, Australians fear that the. Commonwealth is becoming Americanised, but we have a long way to go; or. .as ?n A me " rican would say, we should worry!,