The Lexicographer's Rules

My latest column in the Malaysia Star: Underworld lingo. The column, as always, is written for an audience that may not be perfectly fluent with English.

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In 1931, the Los Angeles Times published a story headlined Underworld lingo. It was a lexicon of criminal cant and jargon written by Ben Kendall, a police reporter.

Kendall formerly was a police reporter in Chicago, too, where he uncovered bribes and corruption by making friends with pickpockets, safeblowers, and shoplifters. Some eight years later, Kendall would be indicted and convicted for his role in bribery related to illegal gambling in Los Angeles.

So, given his experience on both sides of the law, one can only assume that the lingo he recorded was genuine. But how much of it lasted? Seventy-eight years on, we find that some of the lingo is still in use, while some of it has vanished.

Alky is recorded by Kendall as “straight alcohol.” Most people today would use it to mean an acoholic drinker rather than the drink itself.

Angle he records as “a plan; a lead,” which is more or less how it’s used today. If someone says, “I don’t know what his angle is, but he’s up to no good,” they’d mean that the fellow seemed to be planning something suspicious.

Booster does indeed still mean a shoplifter. Boost in general means “to steal” and a booster bag is a specially designed bag that is meant to conceal stolen merchandise as it is taken out of a store.

Chiv is common still in prison lingo, though it’s usually spelled shiv. An even older form is chive, meaning a knife as far back as the 17th century. A shiv is a knife, too, but in prison slang it is especially a crude, improvised one, such as a toothbrush that has had a razor blade attached to it.

Grand still means a thousand dollars. Take still means “a share,” too, but it’s a fairly straight business term: “What’s my take on all this? If he gets 15% of the ticket money, I want 15%, too.” A pay-off is still a bribe or a payment made to someone to keep them from hurting you or your things.

Haywire, Kendall writes, is a “mental aberration.” Today we’d say that a machine went haywire more often than we would say a person went haywire. We mean the machine started malfunctioning.

Jam still means trouble or a sticky situation. “Can you help me out with the rent this month? I’m in a jam until payday.” Or, “I’m in a jam with the wife. She doesn’t know I was at the bar last night. Tell her I was at your house.”

Lug he defines as a “stupid fellow; a hanger-on,” which is close to the way we’d use it today, but not quite. We’d say a man (almost never a woman) is a big lug, which would mean that he was kind of stupid, but also clumsy or ungainly. It’s often used as an affectionate insult. “You big lug! You didn’t have to bring me flowers!” might be the kind of thing a woman would say in a fake tough voice.

Muscling in is still done pretty much as Kendall defined it: “to force one’s way in for a cut on the profits of a venture.” People still get nailed, too, meaning they get caught or arrested. And screwy still means “crazy.”

Kendall calls a wing-ding “a fit; berserk,” which is a meaning that other dictionaries show to have been more common in the past. The Oxford English Dictionary defines it more fully as “a fit or spasm, esp. as simulated by a drug addict” and in a “weakened sense, a furious outburst.”

However, only a later meaning is used today, which is “a party.” I daresay that no-one who today throws a wing-ding is faking a seizure so that they can get controlled drugs from a doctor.

Yentz hasn’t lasted. It meant “to outsmart” or “to defeat.” It was sometimes spelled yence or yince and had another crude, sexual meaning that meant “to have a non-romantic act of copulation.” Both meanings are synonymous with different meanings of screw.

Loogan (sometimes spelled loogin or lugan, according to the Historical Dictionary of American Slang) is also no longer used to mean “a minor hoodlum,” though hood, recorded by Kendall, is still used to mean “a petty gangster.”

For what it’s worth, I find loogan in Jamieson’s Scottish Dictionary of 1825 with a definition of “a rogue” and in a couple of modern amateur lists of prison slang online as meaning “mentally ill prisoner” in Ontario, Canada.

Perhaps one of the most interesting additions to Kendall’s slang list is his definition of quim as “anybody’s sweetheart.” Historically, and more often, this term has meant “the vagina.”

Even when used to mean “a woman” (a usage confined mainly to North America) it has usually been the crudest of terms meant to refer to the woman as chattel (a personal possession) or as nothing more than the target of sexual acts. It objectifies her as being no better than what her sexual organs are good for.

It’s possible that Kendall only knew the term in a purer, more innocent form. But I imagine, especially given his connection with the rougher corners of the underworld, that he knew very well about its less polite meaning. He would have had a laugh at getting such a coarse word printed in a daily newspaper in a time when even hell and damn might not have been allowed.

I want to take a moment to remember William Safire for his kindness.

He was unstinting with his help in matters that were important to me. He gave generous public praise to my radio show, A Way with Words. He supported the Historical Dictionary of American Slang when it applied for funding during my editorship, by writing letters of support that shone with erudition and respect. He gave my book, the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang, a much kinder review than it deserved. He gave a cover blurb for my Official Dictionary of Unofficial English. He mentioned Wordnik, my latest project, in his column, generating interest from many thousands. He consented to a long interview about his political dictionary.

Perhaps most importantly, he gave me credit as often as possible in his column for helping him with his research, which allowed my own star to rise in the "language dodge," which is what he called this maven-rich, grammarizing, languagey niche we both inhabited. He did this for lots of people and he did it unbegrudgingly.

Thanks, Bill. You were kind.

Today I want to talk about elephants.

One of the joys of my work as a dictionary editor is finding arbitrary but interesting connections among words, such as those colloquial expressions in English that have to do with elephants.

One elephant you might encounter in English is a white elephant. This is something like a building or a piece of furniture that is big, costly, and seemingly impossible to sell or give away. It can also be a programme or organisation that is a sinkhole for money, meaning that it is expensive and produces little of value. It continues to exist because it is in the favour of some person in power, or else because of inertia.

Related to this is a white elephant sale, which is the kind of event at which you are apt to find things for sale which are perfectly fine – working, clean, and otherwise OK – but yet which are unwanted. Eight-track tape players, maybe. Or a hand-cranked washing machine. Clothing that was fashionable 30 years ago and has yet to come back into style. Art made by the artless and given as gifts to the thankless – or once bought by the tasteless.

Pink elephants are a joking way to describe the hallucinations – strange, imaginary visions and thoughts – you might see if you are excessively drunk or under the influence of drugs. A pink elephant is also used to mean something extraordinary.

Pink elephant is also often used when talking about how hard it is to not think of something once it’s been mentioned. If I tell you: “Don’t think of pink elephants,” what are you going to do? You’re going to think about pink elephants.

The approximate opposite of a pink elephant is the elephant in the room or elephant in the living room. “They ignored the elephant in the room: their daughter still would not speak to them until they agreed to let her go to the beach with her friends.”

This sort of elephant is so big you can’t miss it. Everyone knows it’s there, but nobody mentions it, usually because there seems to be no happy solution to whatever problem that elephant represents.

Elephants are often used metaphorically because of their size. In gold mining and the petroleum business, a piece of land with very large deposits might be called an elephant. Similarly, jumbo, meaning very big, is connected in history to a famous elephant who was considered to be a very large specimen. Since the 1860s, the term has been used for anything that is larger than ordinary.

Indirectly, dumbo, meaning a dumb person, is an elephant-ish term, as it was popularised by the elephant who flew with his ears in the 1941 Disney movie Dumbo. It is probably a play off of jumbo.

One outdated expression that is now little used except by writers who are looking for a bit of historical colour – meaning you’ll probably never hear this expression from the mouth of your average English speaker – is to see the elephant.

This means to become experienced, or to have passed through life or some event (or series of events) and come out on the other side wiser, or to just plain see, hear, feel, and experience everything that an occasion, or life itself, can provide. You might say of a soldier: “You could tell when a soldier had seen the elephant. He had a thousand-yard stare, he could fall asleep at a moment’s notice, and his commanding officer listened to his opinions.”

(A thousand-yard stare is a sharp, unblinking gaze that appears to see nothing at all but at the same time seems to look through you and into your soul.)

By the way, to see the light or to have a come-to-Jesus moment are similar to see the elephant. To see the light means to finally come around to someone else’s point of view. A come-to-Jesus moment is a revelation or sudden overturning of previous attitudes or beliefs. Both of these are still common.

A rare bit of old-fashioned jargon that I picked up from my research is the expression the elephant walks, meaning, “it’s payday”. I found it in a collection of jargon from elevator constructors in the 1930s. I like the expression and use it, but the elephant in my room is that when I do, nobody knows what I’m talking about.

Grant Barrett is editorial director of Wordnik, http://www.wordnik.com, a new online dictionary that aims to collect every word in English.

My family and I are in the process of moving ourselves and our belongings from New York City to the San Francisco Bay area—completely across North America—so updates will continue to be sporadic on this web site. Stay subscribed, though, because they will resume their previous vigor in just a couple of weeks.

My latest column in the Malaysia Star. It is written for English learners.

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Bodily functions are a rich source of English slang, so naturally, we have a lot of ways of saying “urinate,” “defecate” and “go somewhere to urinate and/or defecate.” Here’s a quick rundown of appropriate usage.

Freshen up. This can mean anything from “wash one’s face and hands,” to “fix one’s make-up,” to “straighten, retuck, refasten, or smooth one’s clothing.” It covers all the things one is likely to do in a bathroom or WC. Safe to use by anyone anywhere, though perhaps it’s a bit more likely to be used by or to a woman.

Visit the facilities. Same story: vague enough to cover anything that happens in a room where there is a toilet and a sink. Safe for all people and places. You might say, “I need to visit the facilities. Where would I find them?”

Powder one’s nose. Strictly for women, this one explicitly refers to make-up, yet it is widely used even by women who don’t use makeup. It’s a cover-up! Can be used anywhere to cover any purpose in the little room with the porcelain fixtures.

Go to the bathroom covers both visiting the little room as well as the acts of urination and defecation themselves. Though it is less polite and less vague than the expressions above, it is safe to use in front of almost anyone, though it’s far more likely to be heard in North America. In the UK, go to the WC is similarly used. (Americans understand “WC” but they don’t use it much.)

Use the toilet has pretty much the same usage, though for many Americans, toilet refers specifically to the white, water-filled porcelain seat that you sit upon in a bathroom and not to the room itself. If you say, “I need to go to the toilet,” they think of you doing certain bodily acts and not just of you going to a specific room.

Make water. Sufficiently euphemistic that it can be used in a non-giggly way by patients and doctors when discussing the body. No one will be embarrassed by too much detail, and yet it’s less formal and less clinical than a word like “urinate” or, worse, micturate, a synonym. It’s not much used elsewhere in everyday colloquial English.

Go to the little girls’ or little boys’ room. Used by adults talking to children but also used by adults talking among themselves and not often in a joking way. Adults probably remember it being used by their elementary school teachers, who are masters at finding ways to talk about the bathroom so that mobs of children don’t giggle.

Go number 1 or number 2, to urinate or defecate. This is also part of the language of teachers, parents, and children. Children might say to a teacher, “I need to go number 2.” Then the teacher knows how long the child should be out of the classroom and whether or not to come along.

Use the potty or go potty means to visit the bathroom or to urinate or defecate. This is language used when talking to children or in the presence of children. Similar terms are take a pee-pee or poo-poo, go pee-pee or poo-poo, or, for urination only, go wee-wee (British and American), to tinkle (British and American), to widdle (British), and to piddle (British).

Plain old go pee and go poop (without the second syllable repeated) are fine to use around children and are used among family members or close friends of any age.

See a man about a horse is an adult way of saying, “go to the bathroom,” as in, “I need to see a man about a horse and then we can hit the road” (I need to urinate and then we can leave). The expression is so widely used that there’s not much strength left in its euphemism.

Evacuate one’s bowels. An inoffensive but not altogether euphemistic term typical of the sort used by medical professionals and police when making formal descriptions. There’s usually a notion that the bowel evacuation was not intentional, as might happen during a car accident or in the case of diarrhoea. It is rather crude and not to be used to excuse yourself during a meal, when traveling with family, or even when partying with friends. If you said, “Excuse me, this is a fine meal, but I need to go evacuate my bowels,” it would bring unpleasant associations to mind.

Take a piss. To urinate. This is crude and mainly used by and among men. Not a good one for polite company, nor is take a dump, which means to defecate. The British take or take a slash (urinate) has the same kind of usage: it’s used mainly among men and boys.

Similarly, take a leak and drain the lizard aren’t really all that polite and not likely to be used by or among women except in a joking way. Only slightly more polite is take or go for a wizz, also spelled wiz, whiz, and wazz.