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Chapter 1
Before the Flapper
“23 Skidoo!”
To be sure, young people in the United States did not suddenly start using slang with the advent of the Jazz Age in about 1920. Slang has long been an integral component of American English, and the young have never distinguished themselves by confining their speech to standard English.
A viable slang idiom, though, is dependent upon a viable subculture, for the creation of slang is by its very nature a social and group process. Further, the transmission of slang among a group depends on either the mobility of the group (as is the case with the slang of workers or criminals) or the existence of means of mass communication, such as comic strips in newspapers, phonograph records, radio, movies, or television.
Before World War I, a viable youth subculture did not exist anywhere other than on the campuses of colleges and possibly within pockets of youthful vagrants, criminals, and workers. There was little mobility among the young (or in the nation for that matter), and the various forms of mass communication which would make the national spread of slang possible did not begin to emerge until the 1920s.
It is thus no surprise that before World War I the specialized study of the slang idiom of the young was limited to the study of the slang of college students. College slang was then (and to some degree is now) the product of institutional, not generational forces. Each college or university was a closed social system which developed its own traditions, customs, and language. While some words were nearly universal (such as pony for a literal translation of a work in a foreign language), many were institutional-specific. Most of the vocabulary dealt with academic or institutional subjects such as campus landmarks, intracollege rivalries, academic subjects, and one’s level of performance in studies. The big subjects treated by 20th-century youth slang (greetings and farewells, status, intoxication, and sex) were all but ignored by pre-1920 slang.
College Slang in the 1850s
Probably the earliest treatment of the language used by young people in the United States was A Collection of College Words and Customs by John Bartlett (Cambridge: John Bartlett, 1851).1 Bartlett addressed English and American institutions, and overall he paid as much attention to customs as to language. Much of the language that Bartlett recorded was jargon, while much of the actual slang dealt with college-specific subjects and situations. For example, there was a diverse slang idiom to describe a student’s performance on recitations, ranging from the poor recitation (barney, bull, lump, smash, ticker) to the good (rowl or shine), showy (squirt), or perfect (curl or sail).
Some of the slang not pertaining specifically to college life as reported by Bartlett follows:
B
blood Excellent
bos Desserts
buck Excellent
bull To discuss at length
C
coax To curry favor through flattery
collar To appropriate
cork An utter failure or stopper
Cuz John A privy
D
dead Unprepared, unable
decent Tolerable
devil To idle
dig To study hard
diked out Dressed up stylishly. What a difference a century would make with this one!
F
fag To labor to the point of weariness. And this one!
fat Containing money (said of a letter). Heads up rappers, here comes a word!
ferg To regain one’s poise
fish To ingratiate oneself and curry favor through flattery
flummux A failure
fork on To appropriate to oneself
G
gas To deceive or cheat
gonus A dimwit
gorm To eat voraciously
gum A deception
H
hard up The object of a joke
hunch A tip or implication
L
lem A privy
long ear A sober and religious person
M
minor A privy
N
number ten A privy
nuts Despicable, foolish
R
ragtail An annoying person
ray An insight or clue, as in “He doesn’t have a ray.”
S
seed A youth
seedy Rowdy
short ear A rowdy person
skin To plagiarize
skunk To fail to pay a debt
smouge To procure without permission
spoony Silly, absurd, often used to describe someone who is drunk
squirty Gaudy
T
temple A privy
tight Pleasantly intoxicated
tight fit A good joke
W
wire A trick
College Slang Circa 1900
At the turn of the century, the American Dialect Society performed a comprehensive examination of the language used by college students throughout the United States. The two seminal articles were “College Words and Phrases” by Eugene H. Babbit, Dialect Notes, Volume II, Part I (1900) and “College Slang Words and Phrases,” Dialect Notes, Volume IV, Part III (1915). From these two articles and sev...
