FASHIONABLE SLANG.

New Zealand Times, Volume XXXIII, Issue 5541, 31 December 1878, Page 3

FASHIONABLE SLANG.

Social Notes.

There are several varieties of slang in the English as well as in the French, German, and other European languages. Slang, or cant—sometimes called pedlar's I'rench—was originally the speech of an alien race, the gipsies or Rommany folk. From the gipsies many of their peculiar words were borrowed by tramps, vagrants, vagabonds, beggars, and thieves ; and from this class again the words aßCended into that higher stratum of our complex civilisation composed of small traders and working men—such as costermongers, clay laborers, navvies, and the servants and frequenters of the stable, grooms, jockeys, betting men, and others of that too numerous class. In our day slang has ascended several degrees higher, till it has reached at last the lips of the wealthy, the high-born, and the beautiful. The Blang of the gipsies is genuine and real, and merits as such a certain amount of respect. The slang of the educated classes is unreal and detestable. It is of this latter slang that I desire to speak, and to raise my voice on behalf of the purity of our noble English tongue—the mo3t copious, the most energetic, and the most poetical at this time spoken on tho globe, and that promises to be, in no very distant future, if it be not so already, the paramount speech of tho civilised world. That the dirty cesspools of slang should empty themselves into the clear river of classical English is a result of our modern manners, which is much to be deplored, and against which the leaders of society should set themselves as resolutely as they do against other breaches of decorum and good manners. The vulgar among the middle and upper classes affect exaggeration in their expletives. " Very good" and " very bad" are phrases that are seldom heard, having been superseded by such werds as "awful" and "dreadful." A /very pretty girfis an awfully pretty girl, or a dreadfully fine woman. Our golden youth, male and female, as well as the lower grade of people who ape their manners and language, are at some times " awfully jolly," at other times "dreadfully bored." "I was at anawfully nice dinner party last night," says one. "You should see the new farce," says another, "it is screamingly funny." I am going down to Brighton next week," says a third; "it is bo jolly to be by the briny." While a young lady accepting a' bouquet from an admirer graciously acknowledges the gift with the words, " Ob, thank you so much ! Ta! awfully ta /". • It ia another characteristic of the present time that young people—at least in or in. the ordinary current of conversation—never talk of "friendship" Or "love." Theso honest oid words are antiquated, and it is almost as contrary to good manners to mention them as it would be to speak of the commonest functions of nature. Fashion often disguises what it has to say in this respect under synonyms derived from the gutter. " I am awfully bored in general society," said a lady of title, " but I enjoy myself immensely among my pah." "'He to a great ally of mine," said one member of Parliament to another, as if ho were afraid of believing in friendship and loth tP utter its name. Love fared still worso than friendship in the year 1573, Smith, is awfully spoony upon Miss Jones," says one. " Well," replies his companion, " sho is an immensely fine girl, but she has no ■tin." "I can't understand," says Snob tho first to Snob thosecondj ''how a fellow can go spooning abou,t ft girl that hasn't got a penny to bjosa herself with ;" and Snob the second replies, '.'Nor I either. Neither can I understand how that awful ass" (Jones or Robinson as tho case may be) " can opoon about his own wife as he docs after being married two years J" It is not surprising that the Divorce Court should have an, overflow of business, if the word Love has lost not only the sanctity of. Us name

"but its meaningvor if people who in their'urncontaminated youth have felt the gentle passion - are ashamed at v. 'later time of havir;.' once been natural. If courtship be a thing for ridicule, it is no wonder that matrimony—which ought to be its Crown, .its consummation, and its glory—should fall in the fruit, into the contempt which accompanied it in the blossom.

Two words'derived from the stable are constantly heard from the, mouths "'of men who may have studied at Oxford or Cambridge, who may hold commissions in the army or the navy, or be high in the Civil Service of the Crown, or who may otherwise rank honorably in the estimation of the world and of society. These words are "greom" and ''form." A fashionable newspaper, noted for its excellent caricatures of the notables of the day, writes of a lady, whose name shall not be repeated,.- " She is fair and 6plendid, and has a profusion of hair, which she grooms in the plainest way, without fringe." "Look at that little filly," says a vulgar 1 ' man in a ballroom, " how nicely "she is groomed." "Form" in the stable signifies the state of health and general condition of a horse. " The word is of such modern acceptanco as to be uuknown not only to Captain Grose in the last century, but to the compilers of Hotten's Slang Dictionary, published so lately as 1864. It is no longer confined to the race-course, to Tattersall's, or to the stables where it originated, but is constantly employed to convey the idea of fashion, manners, customs, and polito observance. It is not good " form " to arrive too late to dinner, to dance with animation, or to applaud heartily at the opera, &c._ It is. good " form," however, to call a hat a tile, a child a hid, money dibs, a father a relieving officer, a mother or a wife an. old woman, a cigar a weed, clothes togs, a pocket-handkerchief a wipe, a cravat a choker, a shilling a hob, £25 a pony, &c. That men of superior culture, by frequenting low society, should pick up the words of their associates is intelligible ; but that when out of such society they should repeat and be proud of the vulgarity which they have caught as they would catch scarlet' fever, is no more to be understood than that a gentleman should like to be considered a costormpn'ger or a chim-ney-sweep. . i - *° Corruption of language, if it doe's not precede and produce, very certainly accompanies, the corruption of manners. If the upper classes abdicate a function which should belongvtq them, of preserving the purity of the mother* ton«ue, all the more imperative should be the duty of the Forum, the Bulpit, and the Senate —imitating in this respect the example of all great writers and poets—to preserve it as it came down to them from the past, and to add to its wealth and beauty by all the means, aa the great Chatham said on a different occasion, " which God and Nature have placed at their disposal."—By Charles Mackay.