NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions

577 Pages·2000·3.85 MB·English

by  Richard A. Spears

’
NTC
s
Dictionary of
American Slang
and
Colloquial
Expressions
third edition
Richard A. Spears, Ph.D.
abc
McGraw-Hill
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DOI: 10.1036/0071392041
Contents
About This Dictionary v
Terms and Symbols xi
Pronunciation Guide xiv
Dictionary 1
Phrase-Finder Index 485
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About This Dictionary
The third edition of this dictionary contains more than 800 new expres-
sions. These comprise the expressions that have appeared in the last few
years—including many new expressions used in everyday talk on the
streets and the college campus. The “Phrase-Finder Index” has been
completely revised to make finding the location of new phrasal entries
in the dictionary easier. What do we expect of slang in the year 2000
and beyond? Much of the same: sex, scatology, rudeness, and clever
wordplay.
This dictionary is a collection of slang and colloquial expressions
in frequent use in the United States in the twentieth century. It con-
tains expressions that are familiar to many Americans and other expres-
sions that are used primarily within small groups of people. The entries
represent the language of the underworld, the nursery, the college cam-
pus, California beaches, urban back streets, and Wall Street. We hear
from prisoners, surfers, junkies, Valley Girls, blacks, weight lifters, and
just plain folks. Fad words, metaphors, wordplay, and various figures
of speech make up the body of the dictionary.
There is no standard test that will decide what is slang or collo-
quial and what is not. Expressions that are identified as slang are often
some type of entertaining wordplay, and they are almost always an alter-
native way of saying something. Colloquial expressions are usually spo-
ken and are often thought of as being direct, earthy, or quaint. Slang
and colloquial expressions come in different forms: single words, com-
pound words, simple phrases, idioms, and complete sentences. Slang is
rarely the first choice of careful writers or speakers or anyone attempt-
ing to use language for formal, persuasive, or business purposes. None-
theless, expressions that can be called slang or colloquial make up a
major part of American communication in movies, television, radio,
newspapers, magazines, and informal conversation.
Localized fad words are usually thought to have a short life, but
other kinds of slang expressions may spread and last for a long time.
The farther they spread, the longer they will last. If they last long
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NTC’s Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
enough, they may become so well known that they become standard
English unavoidably. Most such slangy expressions simply join an enor-
mous pool of similar expressions, and they are used until displaced by
newer terms. At some point the old ones are put on hold until they are
forgotten by everyone or revived by a new generation. Many expres-
sions that hang around for decades will pop up again and again in nov-
els and movies or in sporadic use in the speech of older generations.
For more than two hundred years, the jargon of criminals has been
a major source of everyday slang words. Alcohol, drugs, and crime have
been firmly fixed in the public consciousness since the time of prohi-
bition in the United States. The entertainment value of crime and law
enforcement has brought a constant stream of criminal slang into nov-
els, movies, and radio and television shows over the last half century.
This dictionary contains many of the expressions from these areas that
have made public appearances through the years. Even more remain
hidden behind closed doors. Matters of social taboo have also provided
many slang expressions. Although strictly speaking taboo words are not
slang, many taboo expressions have been included in this edition. Young
people are responsible for a high proportion of the fad expressions and
collegiate wordplay found here. Clever or insulting nicknames for types
of people are the major linguistic product of this subgroup.
Whereas many of the entries are humorous or clever, others sim-
ply represent the everyday turns of phrase common to informal speech
in the United States. Where possible, the examples are given in natural
slangy language, even if it is ungrammatical in formal writing. The
examples are to be taken as representative of slang usage, not of stan-
dard, formal English usage.
Most slang words that deal with personal type, race, sex, ethnic
origins, and so forth, are quite rude—often hateful—and considered
by some people taboo. No apology is made for those that are included.
They are rude or they wouldn’t be considered slang or colloquial. On
the other hand, no attempt is made to include all of them, and many
of the worst have been omitted. Slang is slang and anyone looking for
an issue will find many of them in nonstandard vocabulary. It is worth-
while to include rude words and identify them as such for the sake of
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About This Dictionary
innocents who encounter these words on television, in the theater, in
novels, in newspapers, in the workplace, in shops, and on the street.
The grammar and syntax of each expression are best determined
from the examples that accompany each entry. The notion of “part of
speech” is relevant to the function of individual words. The words
within the clauses and phrases that are entries in the dictionary can
be given part-of-speech labels, but it is the grammar and syntax of
the entire phrase that is important. Each expression in the dictionary
is assigned a “function code” that serves to indicate the functional
potential of the entry expression. These codes represent function inde-
pendently from form. That is to say, expressions that function the same
get the same label. For instance, nouns, noun compounds, noun
phrases, and noun clauses are all marked n. for “nominal.” The codes
are described in the following section, “Guide to the Use of the
Dictionary.”
Unlike standard English, few slang or colloquial expressions are
standardized in spelling or punctuation. Standard dictionaries differ
considerably as to whether a standard English compound is printed as
one word, two words, or a hyphenated word. The spelling of slang
entries is even more variable. This dictionary usually represents slang
expressions in the form in which they were found in print, except for
rhyming compounds, e.g., fat-cat or funny-money, which are always
hyphenated in this book.
The entries come from many sources. Many have been collected
and submitted by college students and other individuals. Much of the
latest material has come directly from television and a lesser amount
from contemporary radio. The Internet has become the newest major
source of slang for the collector and reader. Standard reference works
have been used to verify the meanings and spellings of older material.
A surprising amount of old material has been verified in reruns of old
movies. Many attestations have come from contemporary journalism,
especially human interest and Sunday supplement material. A few of
the examples are verbatim quotes of the original. Some are concocted,
and many more have been edited to exemplify an expression’s mean-
ing more concisely than the original quote. The examples exist to illus-
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NTC’s Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions
trate meaning, not to prove the earliest date of print or broadcast
dissemination.
Guide to the Use of the Dictionary
1. Entries are alphabetized according to an absolute alphabetical order
that ignores all punctuation. The hyphen is treated the same as a
space. Entries beginning with numerals precede the alphabetic
entries.
2. The first step in finding an expression is to try looking it up in the
body of the dictionary. Entries that consist of two or more words
are entered in their normal order, such as chill someone’s action.
Phrases are never inverted or reordered like action, chill someone’s
or track, off the.
3. If you do not find the expression you want or if you cannot decide
on the exact form of the expression, look up any major word in the
expression in the “Phrase-Finder Index,” which begins on page 485.
There you will find all the multiword expressions that contain the
word you have looked up. Pick out the expression you want, and look
it up in the body of the dictionary.
4. Entry expressions appear in boldface type. When words or expres-
sions that are not entries in this dictionary are cited, they appear in
italics. Function codes and examples appear in italics.
5. A main entry may have one or more alternative forms. The alter-
natives are printed in boldface type and are preceded by “and.”
6. Definitions are in roman type. Alternative or closely related defin-
itions are separated by semicolons.
7. Some definitions contain restrictive comments in parentheses that
help to make the definition clearer. These comments limit the con-
text in which the expression can be used.
8. Comments in parentheses after a definition give additional infor-
mation about the expression, including any cautions, comments on
origins, or indications of cross-referencing. Each numbered sense
can have its own comments.
9. Every expression is followed by a function code that indicates the
grammatical or syntactic function of the expression. These codes are
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About This Dictionary
00. in italics. The function codes provide a way of determining the
grammatical or syntactic function of a particular expression as it
occurs in its examples. Expressions functioning as nominals (nouns,
noun phrases, etc.) are marked n. Expressions serving to modify,
restrict, or qualify (adjectives, adjective phrases, adverbs, adverb
phrases, etc.) are marked mod.Expressions that are transitive verbs
or transitive verb phrases (a transitive verb, its object(s), modi-
fier(s), and auxiliaries) are marked tv. Expressions that are intran-
sitive verbs or intransitive verb phrases (an intransitive verb, its
auxiliaries, and modifiers) are marked in. Other abbreviations are
explained in the section titled “Terms and Symbols.”
10. Some expressions that are modifiers (marked mod.) can occur only
before or after the things they modify. Other modifiers can occur
both before and after the things they modify. The distribution of
modifiers is illustrated in the examples.
11. Many expressions have more than one major sense or meaning.
These meanings are numbered with boldface numerals.
12. Sometimes a numbered sense will have an alternative form that
does not apply to the other senses. In such cases the “and” plus
the alternative forms follow the numeral.
13. Entries that contain unfamiliar words and entries whose spelling
is misleading have an indication of pronunciation in International
Phonetic Alphabet symbols. See the symbols and their values in the
“Pronunciation Guide.”
14. In some entries, comments direct the user to other entries for
additional information through the use of the terms “Go to” or
“See also.” The expressions mentioned are in special type.
15. If an entry has a grammatical structure that requires a nominal to
serve as a subject or object, the nominal is represented by some-
one for human nominals or something for nonhuman nominals.
When both human and nonhuman nominals are possible, some-
one or something is used.
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