Slang English Quotes

She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else

Fuck You Poem #45 Fuck you in slang and conventional English. Fuck you in lost and neglected lingoes. Fuck you hungry and sated; faded, pock marked, and defaced. Fuck you with orange rind, fennel and anchovy paste. Fuck you with rosemary and thyme, and fried green olives on the side. Fuck you humidly and icily. Fuck you farsightedly and blindly. Fuck you nude and draped in stolen finery. Fuck you while cells divide wildly and birds trill. Thank you for barring me from his bedside while he was ill. Fuck you puce and chartreuse. Fuck you postmodern and prehistoric. Fuck you under the influence of opiun, codeine, laudanum, and paregoric. Fuck every real and imagined country you fancied yourself princess of. Fuck you on feast days and fast days, below and above. Fuck you sleepless and shaking for nineteen nights running. Fuck you ugly and fuck you stunning. Fuck you shipwrecked on the barren island of your bed. Fuck you marching in lockstep in the ranks of the dead. Fuck you at low and high tide. And fuck you astride anyone who has the bad luck to fuck you, in dank hallways, bathrooms, or kitchens. Fuck you in gasps and whispered benedictions. And fuck these curses, however heartfelt and true, that bind me, till I forgive you, to you.

I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.” “There is correct English: that is not slang.” “I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

Are you beginning to dislike slang, then?” said Rosamond with mild gravity. “Only the wrong sort. All choice of words is slang. It marks a class.” “There is correct English; that is not slang.” “I beg your pardon; correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

My Homer does not speak in your grandparents’ English, since that language is no closer to the wine-dark sea than your own. I have tried to keep to a register that is recognizably speakable and readable, while skirting between the Charybdis of artifice and the Scylla of slang.

When you depart from standard usage, it should be deliberate and not an accidental lapse. Like a poet who breaks the rules of poetry for creative effect, this only works when you know and respect the rule you are breaking. If you have never heard of the rules you are breaking, you have no right to do so, and you are likely to come off like a buffoon or a barbarian. Breaking rules, using slang and archaic language can be effective, but it is just as likely to give you an audience busy with wincing.

I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and more different kinds of slang during my few weeks' stay in London than in my whole "tenderloin" life in New York. But I suppose the English feel that the language is theirs, and that they may do with it as they please without at the same time allowing that privilege to others.

It is a mass language only in the same sense that its baseball slang is born of baseball players. That is, it is a language which is being molded by writers to do delicate things and yet be within the grasp of superficially educated people. It is not a natural growth, much as its proletarian writers would like to think so. But compared with it at its best, English has reached the Alexandrian stage of formalism and decay.

Unaware of what year it was, Joe wandered the streets desperate for help. But the English language had deteriorated into a hybrid of hillbilly, valleygirl, inner-city slang and various grunts. Joe was able to understand them, but when he spoke in an ordinary voice he sounded pompous and faggy to them.

There is correct English: that is not slang." "I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.

A quick butchers shows up Old Bill three-handed, also a particularly nasty female grass–-and if looks were acid baths the two she collects from us would reduce her to gristle quicker than Mrs. Durand-Deacon.

Australians are descended from a boatload of English convicts, right? So two hundred years in isolation at the bottom of the planet is plenty of time for the language to evolve into some sort of double-speak prison slang.

A truly enlightened attitude to language should simply be to let six thousand or more flowers bloom. Subcultures should be allowed to thrive, not just because it is wrong to squash them, because they enrich the wider culture. Just as Black English has left its mark on standard English Culture, South Africans take pride in the marks of Afrikaans and African languages on their vocabulary and syntax. New Zealand's rugby team chants in Maori, dancing a traditional dance, before matches. French kids flirt with rebellion by using verlan, a slang that reverses words' sounds or syllables (so femmes becomes meuf). Argentines glory in lunfardo, an argot developed from the underworld a centyry ago that makes Argentine Spanish unique still today. The nonstandard greeting "Where y'at?" for "How are you?" is so common among certain whites in New Orleans that they bear their difference with pride, calling themselves Yats. And that's how it should be.

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, "Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English.

Sometimes strange literal meanings are hidden in innocuous-sounding names. Kennedy, means “ugly head” in Gaelic, Boyd means “yellow-faced or sickly,” Campbell means “crooked mouth.” The same is equally true of other languages. As Mario Pei notes, Gorky means “bitter,” Tolstoy means “fat,” and Machiavelli means “bad nails.” Cicero is Roman slang for a wart on the nose (it means literally “chickpea”).

Now that you are living on such intimate terms with her, Gwyn has emerged as a slightly different person... She is both funnier and more salacious than you imagined, more vulgar and idiosyncratic, more passionate, more playful, and you are startled to realize how deeply she exults in filthy language and the bizarre slang of sex... Common twentieth-century words do not interest her. She shuns the term making love, for example, in favor of older, more hilarious locutions, such as rumpty-rumpty, quaffing, and bonker bang. A good orgasm is referred to as a bone-shaker. Her ass is a rumdadum. Her crotch is a slittie, a quim, a quim-box, a quimsby. Her breasts are boobs and tits, boobies and titties, her twin girls. At one time or another, your penis is a bong, a blade, a slurp, a shaft, a drill, a quencher, a lancelot, a lightning rod, Charles Dickens, Dick Driver, and Adam Junior... In the grip of approaching orgasm, however, she tends to revert to the contemporary standbys, falling back on the simplest, crudest words in the English lexicon to express her feelings. Cunt, pussy, fuck. Fuck me, Adam. Again and again. Fuck me, Adam. For an entire month you are the captive of that word, the willing prisoner of that word, the embodiment of that word. You dwell in the land of flesh, and your cup runneth over. Surely goodness and mercy shall follow you all the days of your life.

One of my mom’s friends, a guy in his late fifties, recently told me he “hates” so many of today’s popular slang words (shade, lit, G.O.A.T.) because “they do nothing to improve the English language.” What’s funny is that I can almost promise, forty years ago, his parents were saying the exact same thing about cool, bummer, and freaking out, all phrases that have now taken a seat at the table of acceptable English terminology but started out as annoying teen slang.

Another reason we know that language could not determine thought is that when a language isn't up to the conceptual demands of its speakers, they don't scratch their heads dumbfounded (at least not for long); they simply change the language. They stretch it with metaphors and metonyms, borrow words and phrases from other languages, or coin new slang and jargon. (When you think about it, how else could it be? If people had trouble thinking without language, where would their language have come from-a committee of Martians?) Unstoppable change is the great given in linguistics, which is not what you would expect from "a prisonhouse of thought." That is why linguists roll their eyes at common claims such as that German is the optimal language of science, that only French allows for truly logical expression, and that indigenous languages are not appropriate for the modern world. As Ray Harlow put it, it's like saying, "Computers were not discussed in Old English; therefore computers cannot be discussed in Modern English.

The word cod is of unknown origin. For something that began as food for good Catholics on the days they were to abstain from sex, it is not clear why, in several languages, the words for salt cod have come to have sexual connotations. In the English-speaking West Indies, saltfish is the common name for salt cod. In slang, saltfish means "a woman's genitals", and while Caribbeans do love their salt cod, it is this other meaning that is responsible for the frequent appearance of the word saltfish in Caribbean songs such as the Mighty Sparrow's "Saltfish".

Every dictionary contains a world. I open a book of thieves’ slang from Queen Anne’s reign and they have a hundred words for swords, for wenches, and for being hanged. They did no die, they danced on nothing. Then I peek into any one of my rural Victorian dictionaries, compiled by a lonely clergyman, with words for coppices, thickets, lanes, diseases of horses and innumerable terms for kinds of eel. They gave names to the things of their lives, and their lives are collected in these dictionaries – every detail and joke and belief. I have their worlds piled up on my desk.

In standard American English, the word with the most gradations of meaning is probably run. The Random House Unabridged Dictionary offers one hundred and seventy-eight options, beginning with “to go quickly by moving the legs more rapidly than at a walk” and ending with “melted or liquefied.” In the Crescent-Callas of the borderlands between Mid-World and Thunderclap, the blue ribbon for most meanings would have gone to commala. If the word were listed in the Random House Unabridged, the first definition (assuming they were assigned, as is common, in order of widest usage), would have been “a variety of rice grown at the furthermost eastern edge of All-World.” The second one, however would have been “sexual intercourse.” The third would have been “sexual orgasm, “as in Did’ee come commala’? (The hoped-for reply being Aye, say thankya, commala big-big.) To wet the commala is to irrigate the rice in a dry time; it is also to masturbate. Commala is the commencement of some big and joyful meal, like a family feast (not the meal itself, do ya, but the moment of beginning to eat). A man who is losing his hair (as Garrett Strong was that season), is coming commala. Putting animals out to stud is damp commala. Gelded animals are dry commala, although no one could tell you why. A virgin is green commala, a menstruating woman is red commala, an old man who can no longer make iron before the forge is-say sorry-sof’ commala. To stand commala is to stand belly-to-belly, a slang term meaning “to share secrets.

I remember the very day, sometime during the first two weeks of my five-year amorous sojourn in Brutland, when I was made privy to one of the most arcane of their utterings. The time was ripe for that major epiphany, my initiation into the sacred knowledge—or should I say gnosis?—of that all-important, quintessentially Brutish slang term, the word that endless hours of scholastic education by renowned mentors, plus years of scrupulous scrutiny into scrofulous texts, had disappointingly failed to impart to me, leaving me with that deep sense of emptiness begotten by hemimathy; the time was finally ripe for me to be transported by the velvety feel of the unvoiced palato-alveolar fricative, the élan of the unpronounceable and masochistically hedonistic front open-rounded vowel, and, last but not least, the (admittedly short) ejaculatory quality of the voiced velar stop: all three of them combined together to form that miraculous lexical item, the word shag.

fuck VULGAR SLANG  v. [trans.] 1 have sexual intercourse with (someone).  [intrans.] (of two people) have sexual intercourse. 2 ruin or damage (something).  n. an act of sexual intercourse.  [with adj.] a sexual partner.  exclam. used alone or as a noun (the fuck) or a verb in various phrases to express anger, annoyance, contempt, impatience, or surprise, or simply for emphasis.    go fuck yourself an exclamation expressing anger or contempt for, or rejection of, someone.  not give a fuck (about) used to emphasize indifference or contempt.    fuck around spend time doing unimportant or trivial things.  have sexual intercourse with a variety of partners.  (fuck around with) meddle with.  fuck off [usu. in imperative] (of a person) go away.  fuck someone over treat someone in an unfair or humiliating way.  fuck someone up damage or confuse someone emotionally.  fuck something up (or fuck up) do something badly or ineptly.   fuck·a·ble adj.  early 16th cent.: of Germanic origin (compare Swedish dialect focka and Dutch dialect fokkelen); possibly from an Indo-European root meaning 'strike', shared by Latin pugnus 'fist'.   Despite the wideness and proliferation of its use in many sections of society, the word fuck remains (and has been for centuries) one of the most taboo words in English. Until relatively recently, it rarely appeared in print; even today, there are a number of euphemistic ways of referring to it in speech and writing, e.g., the F-word, f***, or fk. fuck·er  n. VULGAR SLANG a contemptible or stupid person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·head  n. VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fuck·ing  adj. [attrib.] & adv. [as submodifier] VULGAR SLANG used for emphasis or to express anger, annoyance, contempt, or surprise. fuck-me  adj. VULGAR SLANG (of clothing, esp. shoes) inviting or perceived as inviting sexual interest. fuck-up  n. VULGAR SLANG a mess or muddle.  a person who has a tendency to make a mess of things. fuck·wit  n. CHIEFLY BRIT., VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse). fu·coid

The following books can be recommended: The Muvver Tongue, by Robert Balthrop and Jim Woolveridge, The Journeyman Press, 1980 The Cockney, by Julian Franklyn, Andre Deutsch, 1953 Dictionary of Rhyming Slang, by Julian Franklyn, Routledge, 1975 An unrivalled record of Cockney speech is to be found in Mayhew’s London and the other following books can be recommended: Balthrop, Robert and Jim Woolveridge, The Muvver Tongue (The Journeyman Press, London, 1980). Franklyn, Julian, The Cockney (Andre Deutsch, 1953). Franklyn, Julian, Dictionary of Rhyming Slang (Andre Deutsch, 1961). Harris, Charles, Three Ha’Pence to the Angel (Phoenix House, London, 1950). Jones, Jack, Rhyming Cockney Slang (Abson Books, London, 1971). Lewey, F., Cockney Campaign (Heffer, 1944). Matthews, Professor William, Cockney Past and Present (Routledge, London, 1940). O’London, Jack (Wilfred Whitten), London Stories (TC & EC Jack Ltd, Bristol, 1948). Quennell, Peter, ed., Mayhew’s London (Hamlyn, London, 1969). Robbins, G., Fleet Street Blitzkrieg Diary (Ernest Benn Ltd, London, 1942). Upton, Clive and David Parry, The Dictionary of English Grammar: Survey of English Dialects (Routledge, London, 1994).

BITCH THE POT Tea and gossip go together. At least, that’s the stereotypical view of a tea gathering: a group of women gathered around the teapot exchanging tittle-tattle. As popularity of the beverage imported from China (‘tea’ comes from the Mandarin Chinese cha) increased, it became particularly associated with women, and above all with their tendency to gossip. Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue lists various slang terms for tea, including ‘prattle-broth’, ‘cat-lap’ (‘cat’ being a contemporary slang for a gossipy old woman), and ‘scandal broth’. To pour tea, meanwhile, was not just to ‘play mother’, as one enduring English expression has it, but also to ‘bitch the pot’ – to drink tea was to simply ‘bitch’. At this time a bitch was a lewd or sensual woman as well as a potentially malicious one, and in another nineteenth-century dictionary the phraseology is even more unguarded, linking tea with loose morals as much as loquaciousness: ‘How the blowens [whores] lush the slop. How the wenches drink tea!’ The language of tea had become another vehicle for sexism, and a misogynistic world view in which the air women exchanged was as hot as the beverage they sipped. ‘Bitch party’ and ‘tabby party’ (again the image of cattiness) were the terms of choice for such gossipy gatherings. Men, it seems, were made of stronger stuff, and drank it too. Furthermore, any self-respecting man would ensure his wife and daughters stayed away from tea. The pamphleteer and political writer William Cobbett declared in 1822: The gossip of the tea-table is no bad preparatory school for the brothel. The girl that has been brought up, merely to boil the tea kettle, and to assist in the gossip inseparable from the practice, is a mere consumer of food, a pest to her employer, and a curse to her husband, if any man be so unfortunate as to affix his affections upon her. In the twenty-first century, to ‘spill the T’ has become a firm part of drag culture slang for gossiping. T here may stand for either ‘truth’ or the drink, but either way ‘weak tea’ has come to mean a story that doesn’t quite hold up – and it’s often one told by women. Perhaps it’s time for bitches to make a fresh pot.

Pym argues that highly specialized technical texts are typically embedded in an international community of scientists, engineers, physicians, lawyers, and the like, who attend international conferences and read books in other languages an so have usually eliminated from their discourse the kind of contextual vagueness that is hardest to translate. As Pym's "tomography" example shows, too, international precision tends to be maintained in specialist groups through the use of Greek, Latin, French, and English terms that change only slightly as they move from one phonetic system to another. "General" texts, on the other hand, are grounded in less closely regulated everyday usage, the way people talk in a wide variety of ordinary contexts, which requires far more social knowledge than specialized texts - far more knowledge of how people talk to each other in their different social groupings, at home, at work, at the store, etc. Even slang and jargon, Pym would say, are easier to translate than this "general" discourse - all you have to do to translate slang or jargon is find an expert in it and ask your questions. (What makes that type of translation difficult is that experts are sometimes hard to find.) With a "general" text, everybody's an expert - but all the experts disagree, because they've used the words or phrases in different situations, different contexts, and can never quite sort out in their own minds just what it means with this or that group.

fuckhead n. VULGAR SLANG a stupid or contemptible person (often used as a general term of abuse).

The proponents of Harlem jive talk ... do not hope that courses in the lingo will ever be offered at Harvard or Columbia. Neither do they expect to learn that Mrs. Faunteen-Chauncey of the Mayfair Set addresses her English butler as 'stud hoss', and was called in reply, 'a sturdy old hen.' -- Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, 1944.

I was always admonished by my English teachers in their heavily accented, Viennese-inflected English not to speak this abomination of an “American dialect” or “American slang” and never to use “American spelling” with its simplifications that testified prima facie to the uncultured and simpleton nature of Americans.

ass1 n. 1 a hoofed mammal of the horse family, which is typically smaller than a horse and has longer ears and a braying call. Genus Equus, family Equidae: E. africanus of Africa, which is the ancestor of the domestic ass or donkey, and E. hemionus of Asia. (in general use) a donkey. 2 BRITISH INFORMAL a foolish or stupid person: that ass of a young man. make an ass of oneself INFORMAL behave in a way that makes one look foolish or stupid. Old English assa, from a Celtic word related to Welsh asyn, Breton azen, based on Latin asinus. ass2 n. NORTH AMERICAN VULGAR SLANG a person's buttocks or anus. [mass noun] women regarded as a source of sexual gratification. oneself (used in phrases for emphasis). bust one's ass try very hard to do something. chew (someone's) ass reprimand (someone) severely. drag (or tear or haul) ass hurry or move fast. get your ass in (or into) gear hurry.

bitch n. 1 a female dog, wolf, fox, or otter. 2 INFORMAL a spiteful or unpleasant woman. BLACK SLANG a woman (used in a non-derogatory sense). 3 (a bitch) INFORMAL a difficult or unpleasant situation or thing: working the night shift is a bitch. 4 INFORMAL a complaint: my big bitch is that there's nothing new here. v. [no obj.] INFORMAL make spitefully critical comments: everybody was bitching about their colleagues. Old English bicce, of Germanic

We can see American English downtown in any city in the States. We would look up a block of “apartments” to a “penthouse,” be deluged by the “mass media,” go into a “chain store,” breakfast on “cornflakes,” avoid the “hot dog,” see the “commuters” walking under strips of “neon,” not “jaywalking,” which would be “moronic,” but if they were “executives” or “go-getters” (not “yes-men” or “fat cats”), they would be after “big business,” though unlikely to have much to do with an “assembly line” or a “closed shop.” There’s likely to be a “traffic jam,” so no “speeding,” certainly no space for “joy-riding” and the more “underpasses” the better. And of course in any downtown city we would be surrounded by a high forest of “skyscrapers.” “Skyscraper” started life as an English naval term — a high light sail to catch the breeze in calm conditions. It was the name of the Derby winner in 1788, after which tall houses became generally called skyscrapers. Later it was a kind of hat, then slang for a very tall person. The word arrived in America as a baseball term, meaning a ball hit high in the air. Now its world meaning is very tall building, as typified by those in American cities. Then you could go into a “hotel” (originally French for a large private house) and find a “lobby” (adopted from English), find the “desk clerk” and the “bell boy,” nod to the “hat-check girl” as you go to the “elevator.” Turn on the television, flick it all about and you’re bound to find some “gangsters” with their “floozies” in their “glad rags.” In your bedroom, where the English would have “bedclothes,” the Americans have “covers”; instead of a “dressing gown” you’ll find a “bathrobe,” “drapes” rather than “curtains,” a “closet” not a “wardrobe,” and in the bathroom a “tub” with a “faucet” and not a “bath” with a “tap.

trique /tʀik/ I. nf 1. (gourdin) cudgel • battre à coups de ~ | to cudgel • recevoir un coup de ~ | to be cudgelled GB • enfant qui ne marche qu'à la ~ | child who needs a firm hand 2. ● • (érection) avoir la ~(vulgar or taboo) | to have a hard-on (vulgaire ou tabou) 3. ◑(prisoners' slang) prohibition from entering certain areas (or whole) of France II. Idiome • être maigre or sec comme un coup de trique | to be as thin as a rake, to be as skinny as a rail (US) triquer /tʀike/ I. vtr (battre) to thrash II. vi - B● (avoir une érection) to have a hard-on (vulgaire ou tabou)

all choice of words is a slang […] correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays.

The torture of animals, especially cats, was a popular amusement throughout early modern Europe. The power of cats was concentrated on the most intimate aspect of domestic life: sex. Le chat, la chatte, le minet mean the same thing in French slang as 'pussy' does in English, and they have served as obscenities for centuries.

Among others, yes. There were some Egyptian gods worshipped there too.” Lourds grinned. “One of the most interesting pieces is the Stoivadeion, the temple dedicated to Dionysus, the Greek god of wine. It’s a giant phallus.” The two soldiers in the front of the boat totally lost it and started laughing hysterically. Even Fitrat laughed, and he wiped his eyes. “Who would do such a thing?” “It was erected—if I may be so bold—” The soldiers howled with glee. “—by an ancient Greek grammarian named Carystius. Sadly, this phallus is practically all that remains of his works. Even that is broken.” “Broken?” The young soldier in the front seat turned around again. He had changed to speaking English. “Yes. In half.” “So now it’s half-cocked? Is that how you say this in your slang?” The soldier laughed and pounded his thigh with a fist. “Yes.” Lourds covered his face with his hat and wanted to throw himself overboard.

The English language once had a word for the characteristic impression that a plant or animal offers to the eye. We called it the “jizz,” and the adoption of that term as sexual slang is unfortunate, as it seems unlikely we’ll come up with a replacement. It is the jizz, for example, that allows a skilled birdwatcher to know a bird by its silhouette alone , or by some quality of movement or the way it holds its head. The strangely unsteady flight of the turkey vulture, the flat forehead of the Barrow’s goldeneye, the endless headlong running of sanderlings on a mudflat— each of these is the jizz. It is so pure an essence that, if captured in a few rough lines drawn with charcoal, it can express an animal more authentically than a portrait by a trained artist who has never carefully watched the creatures he paints. It’s the jizz that ancient art so often represents. While looking at Egyptian treasures in a museum, I felt a rush of nostalgia when an engraving of a scarab beetle reminded me that I used to see a related species, the tumblebug, or Canthon simplex, roll balls of dung across my home prairie. I had completely forgotten; it took a 3,500-year-old artifact from another continent to make me remember.

I tried to talk like them, cursing and cussing, mutilating the English language into a slang that I could barely stand nor understand.

For example, in English we would write Dear Staff, I would like to recognize Sarah’s outstanding performance. In Slang we would write Hey Homies, Shout out to Sarah for doin’ her thing. In Cyber we would write dear staff i wld like 2 ACK sarah 4 her per4manz

There are a lot of stories about where the name Donkey Kong actually came from—everything from a bad fax that made the Nintendo of America team misread Monkey Kong, thinking the M was a D, to its being named after King Kong. But in the end, Miyamoto said it was simpler than that. They wanted an English name because they knew the game would be a hit in America. The word donkey was used to imply something silly, or dumb, and in Japan, kong is a slang word used for an ape. Basically, Miyamoto and crew were naming the game Silly Ape, but they felt Donkey Kong was, well, just more fun to say.

pompe /pɔ̃p/ I. nf 1. (appareil) pump • ~ à bicyclette | bicycle pump 2. ○(chaussure) shoe 3. (apparat) pomp • en grande ~ | with great pomp 4. ○ (exercice) press-up (GB), push-up • faire des ~s | to do push-ups 5. ◑[soldiers' slang] • (classe) soldat de première ~ | lance corporal • soldat de seconde ~ | private II. nfpl vanities • les ~s de Satan | Satan's pomps III. Idiomes 1. avoir un coup de pompe | to be knackered (familier) (GB) ou pooped (familier) 2. à toute pompe○ | at top speed, as quickly as possible 3. marcher or être à côté de ses pompes○ | not to be with it, to be away with the fairies (familier)

The boys made fun of his English, he said. He didn’t know their slang words, and he couldn’t understand some of the London speech. He hadn’t read their comic books or seen the films they liked.

I convinced myself that Gam was just telling me stories to keep me in line, to get me to finish my chores or do my homework. That she didn’t actually believe them herself. I was wrong. Gam called these creatures by their Navajo word: at’latai. Kids these days use the English slang: skinwalkers.

As a teenager, I stopped being afraid because I convinced myself that Gam was just telling me stories to keep me in line, to get me to finish my chores or do my homework. That she didn’t actually believe them herself. I was wrong. Gam called these creatures by their Navajo word: at’latai. Kids these days use the English slang: skinwalkers.

鯖 ‘saba’ Pronounced as “sa-ba” Meaning Unlike most items in Japanese, whose meanings an outsider would have a hard time understanding; Saba has an ordinary connotation all by itself, though it could end up in some funny misunderstandings. Saba is the Japanese slang word for ‘server’ (almost directly borrowed from English). However, there is another meaning worth mentioning. “鯖” is also a slang word for “servant”, which is a concept in the famous “Fate” series.

Elizabeth felt a sudden disposition to cry. She had not had any affection for Bruce Attleton; had, in fact, resented the whim which had made her father put her into Attleton’s charge, but now she began to remember the way in which he had been kind to her. It was Bruce who had insisted on Elizabeth coming to live with himself and his wife, instead of living in a club or hostel as she had suggested, and he had done his best in many ways to see that she had had a good time, and even done what he could to teach her to read, to appreciate literature and despise trash, to listen to music as well as to jazz, and to speak English instead of schoolgirl slang. Alone in the room which had been peculiarly his, Elizabeth visualised his tall figure and dark head, with the black forelock he tossed back from his high forehead, and was sorry that she had disliked him.

She opened her Dictionary of Australian Slang. "I'll just put on my sunnies," she said, slipping on sunglasses. "I'll spit the dummy if you ankle biters take too long, but if you don't, she'll be apples!" "Speak English, please," Dan said. "If you take too long, dude, you're toast." "Got it.

One of the very first Indian words to enter the English language was the Hindustani slang for plunder: loot.

Is language actually getting better, shorter, and easier? Nowadays we often hear exactly the opposite. Teenager slang is awful, students no longer learn Latin, our children — not to mention our president — cannot put together a grammatical sentence. The whimsical poet Ogden Nash was at least half serious in his “Laments for a dying language”: Coin brassy words at will, debase the coinage; We're in an if-you-cannot-lick-them-join age, A slovenliness-provides-its-own-excuse age, Where usage overnight condones misusage. Farewell, farewell to my beloved language, Once English, now a vile orangutanguage.

It wasn’t just Basil. The editing of the classical canon would continue for a millennium and more. Open an 1875 edition of the Latin poet Martial and many of his more explicit poems will have been translated not into English but into Italian—evidently considered a suitable language for sexual deviancy.28 Elsewhere poems were omitted entirely, or glossed in Greek, a language that not only looked erudite and respectable but that had the benefit of being understood by even fewer people than Latin. The opening lines of Catullus’s “Carmen 16” were, as the academic Walter Kendrick has pointed out, still causing trouble well into the twentieth century: they were left out of a 1904 Cambridge University Press edition of his Collected Poems altogether. Discreetly sparing the readers’ blushes (or perhaps their interest) the poem was described as merely “a fragment.”29 Open the 1966 Penguin edition and you will find that the first line has, equally discreetly, been left in the original Latin. “Pedicabo et irrumabo,” it declares, percussively but impenetrably.30 “Carmen 16” would have to wait until almost the end of the twentieth century to find a translation that rendered it correctly—though such was the richness of Latin sexual slang that five English words were needed for that single Latin verb irrumabo.

Tolkien could at any time, and without trying, have rewritten any of his supposedly archaic passages either in really archaic language, in Middle English or Old English, or in completely normal demotic contemporary slang.