Thursday, March 17: Femme Fatale
TALK TO ME
by Deborah Elliott-Upton
slang—n. Nonstandard vocabulary consisting typically of arbitrary and often ephemeral coinages and figures of speech. — Webster’s New Dictionary
Words and their meanings—whether the “respectable” ones we learned in school or the “other” ones we learned in schoolyards—are a part of our life and shape our generation.
Slang changes so quickly. It’s cool when you’re a part of it and sort of sad when you don’t understand the new jargon. (Hint: it means we aren’t quite as young as we thought any more.) Nothing is sadder than an adult trying to use teen slang. It never quite works and they end up looking like a nimrod (see last week’s Femme Fatale article) to those they must be trying to impress with their youth and sounding in the know. Which is also an antiquated bit of slang.)
Slang shapes the literature we read. It’s as crucial to the time period as the apparel and vehicles (or lack of transportation). Think how different The Catcher in the Rye would be without Holden Caulfield’s teenage angst-speak. In The Great Gatsby, even the name Gatsby is said to have come from the popular slang word gat meaning a gun. Mark Twain, Robert Louis Stevenson, and even Shakespeare used slang to add realism to their time period stories. Writers who’ve chosen to use slang seem to be in good company.
See how many of the following slang words you recognize and discern the decade they were first popular. (Answers at the bottom of this article. More slang will appear in next Thursday in “Femme Fatale.”) As you can see, the same slang word often changes in definition throughout the decades. (This collection has been gathered from various sources. Many came to me from other writers, from stories I’ve read and people I’ve interviewed, so I can’t promise total accuracy.)
- (1) Airhead — someone really stupid
(2) All at sea — confused person
(3) Awesome — great
(4) Axed — get fired from a job
(5) Bender — drinking spree
(6) Beefcake — good-looking man
(7) Blast — enjoyable time
(8) Blitzed — intoxicated
(9) Bogart — to keep something to oneself without sharing
(10) Book — to arrest someone
(11) Book — to leave a place
(12) Boogie — to leave a place
(13) Bromance — close male friendship with no sex involved
(14) Bronx Cheer — sound made by blowing air between closed lips to make an insulting noise
(15) Brown nose — to do or say something to entice a closeness to someone who can help you
(16) Call girl — prostitute who makes appointments by telephone
(17) Can — toilet
(18) Can — prison
(19) Can — to get fired
(20) Chill out — to take it easy
(21) Chizzle — to relax
(22) Chow down — to eat
(23) Chrome Dome — a bald guy
(24) Church Key — bottle opener
(25) Clam — a dollar
(26) Corked — intoxicated
(27) Cougar — older woman who dates younger men
(28) Creep — a contemptible person
(29) Crib — home where you live
(30) Croak — to die
(31) Cruise — drive around in hopes of finding someone in which to flirt
(32) Cup of tea — something you like
(33) Cushy — simple or easy
(34) Dime — attractive female
(35) Dilly — something that is exceptional
(36) Deep Pockets — lots of money
(37) Dibs — first claim
(38) Dicey — a risky proposition
(39) Doofus — a fool
(40) Dolled up — dressed up
(41) Dogpack — a group of male friends
(42) Downer — a depressant
(43) Drag — a draw on a cigarette
(44) Drag — to race another vehicle
(45) Dragnet — widespread search for a criminal
(46) Dubdub — asking for the URL address beginning with www
(47) Earful — gossip
(48) Ease up — calm down
(49) Easy — someone easily seduced
(50) Eyeball — to look over someone intently
(51) Face time — actually meeting someone in person
(52) Fade — to leave
(53) Faded — being intoxicated
(54) Fake out — to pretend, cheat or deceive someone
(55) Fin — a five dollar bill
(56) Fish — a college freshman
(57) Flatfoot — a police officer
(58) Flex — to show off
(59) Flip out — to lose control
(60) Flivver — broken-down car
(61) Floozie — woman with loose morals
(62) Fly boy — an aviator
(63) Foine — attractive
(64) Freebie — no cost item
(65) Funny Farm — an insane asylum
(66) Gear — your clothing
(67) Geek — smart person with no people skills
(68) Geezer — old person
(69) Geezer Rock — 1950’s music
(70) Glitch — a defect
(71) Glitzy — luxurious
(72) Gnarly — excellent
(73) Greenback — a dollar
(74) Grift — to run a con
(75) Grease — to bribe
(76) Groovy — great
(77) Gumshoe — a private investigator
(78) Groupie — a person who follows famous people just to be near them
Answers:
- (1) 1980’s
(2) 1910’s
(3) 1980’s
(4) 1920’s
(5) 1940’s
(6) 1950’s
(7) 1940’s
(8) 1950’s
(9) 1970’s
(10) 1940’s
(11) 1990’s
(12) 1980’s
(13) 2000’s
(14) 1920’s
(15) 1950’s
(16) 1940’s
(17) 1950’s
(18) 1940’s
(19) 1900’s
(20) 1980’s
(21) 1990’s
(22) 1950’s
(23) 1940’s
(24) 1950’s
(25) 1920’s
(26) 1920’s
(27) 2000’s
(28) 1940’s
(29) 1980’s
(30) 1940’s
(31) 1950’s
(32) 1930’s
(33) 1910’s
(34) 1990’s
(35) 1910’s
(36) 1930’s
(37) 1930’s
(38) 1950’s
(39) 1960’s
(40) 1900’s
(41) 1990’s
(42) 1960’s
(43) 1910’s
(44) 1950’s
(45) 1900’s
(46) 1990’s
(47) 1910’s
(48) 1940’s
(49) 1950’s
Happy Saint Patrick’s Day. I enjoyed this slang list very much. Whenever I write a story set in an earlier decade, I do “slang” research to make sure I can throw in an authentic word or two. It is amazing how many new usages are created each decade.
Great fun!
Misplaced slang is one of the commonest types of anachronism in recent-past historical fiction. One word writers tend to place too early (I think) is “shrink” for psychiatrist or psychologist. I’m pretty sure it started out as headshrinker in the 50s or maybe late 40s and got shortened to shrink in the late 50s or early 60s. But I’ve seen it used in period fiction set as early as the 30s.
I never dreamed doobie would pass as a scrabble word and it did….
Great article.
Pretty sure “bender” means something else. lol Or it may have just been that one book I read. Either way, it was cool reading your blog again. ;p Hope you’re doing well.
~Summer
I loved this week’s column AND I love that I can now comment from my phone!! WooHoo!! :))
I am amazed at how each decade likes to choose a new word to mean drunk or getting drunk and being put behind bars in jail. Also, that dude now means either sex and that douchebag has a whole new meaning in the 2000’s than it did in previous decades. Or is that TMI? (Text speak is also an invention of this newer generation. I’m still learning much of it!)
OK, Summer. You’re a new generation woman, tell us what bender means now…
I agree with Jon about misplaced slang. But a number of times I’ve been jarred by what I thought were anachronisms, only to learn that they were correct. The term “nark,” for instance, goes back to the mid-1800s, but I associate it with a much later time (I s’pose because “narc” came into usage in the 1970s).
I was so bothered when, in a book I was reading, someone referred to Benjamin Disraeli as “Dizzy” that I had to stop and check. Sure enough, that was not an uncommon nickname for the Prime Minister during his day.
So. Disraeli was a blond? Didn’t know that.
One of my best resources for 18th century dialogue is the first major dictionary of slang, Sir Francis Grose’s A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. It ran though several editions, among which the most readily available is the Third, originally published in 1811, but the UCLA library has a facsimile of the original 1785 edition which I found invaluable. Unfortunately, the last time I went looking for it, it had gone missing.
Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is particularly useful for anybody interested in British and Commonwealth slang, and for many years Robert Chapman’s New Dictionary of American Slang was the standard for us Yanks, but in the last couple decades there has been a monumental effort in the form of J. E. Lighter’s Historical Dictionary of American Slang, the first two volumes of which were published by Random House in the mid-90s, and the last two of which were picked up by Oxford University Press, although they have yet to see the light of day.
Two good internet resources for slang are Michael Quinion’s World Wide Words website and the wiki-based Urban Dictionary, which is the best source for late-breaking slang.