The joy of slang

[Jazzy]

Slang such as ain't, innit and coz has been banned from a school in south London. Author Charles Nevin celebrates modern slang and revisits phrases that have fallen out of fashion. Cor lummy!

Please do not misunderstand me. I love modern slang. It's as colourful, clever, and disguised from outsiders as slang ever was and is supposed to be. Take bare, for example, one of a number of slang terms recently banned by a London school. It means "a lot of", as in "there's bare people here", and is the classic concealing reversal of the accepted meaning that you also find in wicked, bad and cool. Victorian criminals did essentially the same with back slang, reversing words so that boy became yob and so on.

The other banned words are equally interesting. Extra, for example, mischievously stresses the superfluous in its conventional definition, as in "reading the whole book is extra, innit?". And that much disapproved innit? is in fact the n'est-ce pas? English has needed since the Normans forgot to bring it with them.

And who would not admire rinsed for something worn out or overused - chirpsing for flirting, bennin for doubled-up with laughter, or wi-five for an electronically delivered high-five? My bad, being new, sounds more sincere than old, tired, I'm sorry (Sos never quite cut it).

Mouse potato for those who spend too much time on PCs is as striking as salmon and aisle salmon for people who will insist on going against the flow in crowds or supermarket aisles. Manstanding is what husbands and partners typically do while their wives or partners are actually getting on with the shopping.

But (and it was always coming) I do have a sadness to report - the loss of much-loved old friends of phrases that have fallen victim to time, change, and two further factors - first, the current need for brevity in modern communications, and second, the much wider acceptance of words previously considered too uncouth for public exchange.

Rest of article

Do you use any of these slang words? If so, which one/ones?

Do you know any more slang words? If so, could you please post them with their meaning in this thread for us.

 

[Nebulous]

I dont really use any of these slang words, I try to talk like a normal person.