Yet in the end it’s a man’s world and the philosophy is rap’s MOB: Money Over Bitches, i.e. profit before sex. There are no great innovations. Cabbage (green and thus reminiscent of dollar bills, and once pound notes) dates from 1903, chips from 1836 and paper from 1786. Doe is simply a respelt dough and thus 170 years old, and while queen heads refers to Elizabeth II, queen’s pictures was used for her great-great-grandmother, Victoria and long before her, Queen Anne. Cheese has enjoyed something of a relaunch, but it emerges in Australia before 1860; it may be a play on the older bread.. Notes (since the 1850s) and sterling play on standard uses and the high-value £50 note is a pinkie or a red one. Making money is flossing and blowing up while enjoying it is rolling and balling. Perhaps the most recent terms are Gs, although that has signified $1000 since 1928 and grand, which it abbreviates is twenty years older, and wong. Yet even this is an antique: wong cut wonga and wonga looks back to the late nineteenth-century Romani wangur, coal (thus the wongar-camming mush, a miser, i.e. ‘one who loves coal’), which puns on slang’s much older cole, money (1591), which in turn misspells the fuel and plays on the equivalence of money and life’s vital staples. Money must be earned, legitimately otherwise: one hustles, grinds and struggles. None are new, simply practicable.
Selling drugs is one of the ways. Drugs have been interwoven with every youth culture since the beatniks and show no signs of going away. Marijuana, with its links to Jamaica-born Rastafarianism, is the default, but there is cocaine, especially as crack, and heroin and the general term for drugs is food. The vocabulary is wide and constantly changing; this selection is simply culled from a number of lyrics. Marijuana is loud (a notably strong variety), head (usually used of the consumer), draw (as in drawing on a pipe or cigarette), grade, score (used since the 1950s as a purchase of drugs) and weed (from the 1920s, the first recorded use is Caribbean). One’s personal supply is a persy or percy and an ounce is an aussie. To roll a joint is to bill or build it, and to smoke it is to blaze. To be burse, lean or lick-up is to be seriously stoned. Crack can be cheese or white and heroin brown. To deal is to slang, from sling, or to shot, thus the shotter, the dealer and the shotting game: drug dealing.
Which leads, or usually, to the police: the beast, the feds, po-po, who conduct an obbo (observation) then swoop to shift, nab or pull you up. Po-po comes straight from rap, and feds is an unashamed steal from the US where the term was orginally restricted to the FBI and dates to the 1920s. Nab is even older, first recorded in 1681.
It is not all violence and if you have enemies there should be friends. People with whom you can post up and cotch, chill, chat shit and kick back, in other words, relax. Mandem and g(y)aldem, manaman and mans, bredrin, fam, bruvs, black, blad and bloods and Bs. Or cuz, from the States. People who you greet not with a screwface but with the query what a gwarn? or whaa gwaan? a Jamaicanised elision of ‘what’s going on?’ A boss is a don, while junior members are youngers, pickneys and yute or yout. Street and road, the arenas of ‘real’ life, have been noted. Other environments include the hood, i.e neighbourhood and borrowed from the States, ends (a development of the long-established duopoly of London’s East and West), and crib (coined as a slang term in 1597), gates and yard (one’s home).
And for topics of conversation, there’s always clothes, which seem primarily to be trainers: creps, kicks, sneaks and occasionally boogers. Jewellery is ice (formerly the province of old-school robbers) or chops (presumbly from choparita, as mentioned by Smiley Culture). Clothes in general are garms and threads, and can be bad taste or moist acting, which are not compliments. To wear something is to bust, push or most popularly rock it. There is music, which gives spit, to perform a song, snapper, a lyricist (with a possibly connection to black America’s snaps, instant repartee and a descendant of the word-playing street exchanges known as the dozens), rinse, to play a record (and to have sex) and shutdown, which means a success.
Even slang must move beyond simply description. There are value judgements. Good. And bad. For the former MLE offers long, nang (coined in the Caribbean in 1902 and from Mende nyanga, showing off), blatant, sick and grimey (continuing slang’s age-old use of ‘bad’ things to mean their opposite), heavy (once a hippie favourite), cushty (from Romani kushto, kushti, good and widely popularised by the 1980s BBC TV series Only Fools and Horses), dapper and safe, which also works as a greeting, as does easy. Feeling good is to be on smash and on this ting. For the latter there is peak, defined as very bad, though it is popularly used to mean extreme, to the greatest possible extent. Mad, used as adjective or adverb, suggests literal or figurative plenty as does bare, which comes from the Bajan bare, meaning nothing but, i.e. plenty. Used negatively long is overly complicated, boring, difficult or time-consuming and may be linked to the illiterates’ online abbreviation of choice: tl;dr.
This is, it must be re-stressed, merely representative. The themes do seem pretty much to cover the available waterfront, but the words themselves are only a sample. Nor are these the only words and phrases available to MLE speakers. London, Jamaica, New York and elsewhere can offer much more and the offer is fully accepted.
A couple of last thoughts. Although MLE was touted as something new, its arrival was surely quite logical. The all-male immigrant society of the Fifties had long been replaced; children and grandchildren were now living in the UK and, certainly as regarded the working class, were being schooled with their white contemporaries. It was hardly surprising that there would be an increasing overlap in the way that both races spoke. In addition there has been the allure of black culture, seen and indeed promoted by those who merchandise ‘urban style’ as de facto rebellious, ‘hard’, more masculine, more ‘sexy’. The novelty, if there is one, is the adoption of MLE by an increasing section of the white middle class, but again, one can see this in the previous popularity of Estuary English. The terror of being perceived as elitist, let alone ‘posh’, holds serious power among those whose credo is ‘authenticity’. In the local context of the East End, whose latest ‘immigrants’, in the wake of the artists of the Nineties, have turned out to be the gentrifying and well-off white middle classes, it is perhaps unsurprising that these new ‘East Enders’ have opted to take on the predominant linguistic coloration.
MLE surely exists, but it may be dangerous to isolate and simplify, however much this may suit the media. Slang is a long-established form of language, half a millennium old at least, and MLE is simply the latest version, a development and not a sidetrack let alone parallel creation. MLE is the name that has been given to the current set of words that for the last few years are those that fulfil the role of ‘youth slang’, mainly as sourced within the confines of London. That the slang was originally black and has crossed both race and class (not merely to whites but, given the current demographics, also to Asians) is not a wholly new phenomenon: it was there, whether the users noticed it or not, in the middle-class adoption by the beats then hippies of black American slang in the 1960s. The difference there, again because of demographics, is simply that we now have a substantial young native-born black population, whose slang production is strengthened by their fulfilling the primary role of social outsiders / ‘cool’ rebels. This has created a home-grown UK input that did not hitherto exist as much as anything because those who would provide the slang did not yet exist in the UK. So what we are seeing is a perfectly logical development. Perhaps the adoption of black speech sounds – phonology – is different, but then that seems to me to echo Mockney, where the sounds adopted were those of the white slang speakers again by a social group – the young white middle-class – who would never hitherto have used them.
There is also a final proviso, which is focused as much on the gatherers of slang as on the language itself. The baseline of contemporary slang, whether MLE or other, is its fissiparousness. Niche, as the slogan used to say, rules. If simple divisions such as ‘American’ and ‘English’ remind one of the days of four-channel terrestrial TV, the variety of modern slang
s echoes that of cable and its seemingly infinite selection of choices. Slang differs from estate to estate and project to project, from postcode to postcode and from city to city.
Outside temporary labels and subsets, slang in its most broad-brush form remains a continuum. We have slang’s themes and its users – the dispossessed, the marginal – in 1531 and have been seeing them one way or another ever since. The marginality is what counts, not the drugs, the clothes or the music. To an extent MLE exists because the media shone its light and lo! it was there. It may represent the latest form, at least in the UK, but it is still, just as is the succession of synonyms that form slang’s evolving lexis, more of what we have already seen and, surely, a precursor of what is to come.
Index
Abrahams, Roger D.: Deep Down In The Jungle 174–5
Ackroyd, Peter 106–7
Adams, Fanny 45–6
Adams, Jack 250
Adams, Ramon: Western Words 187
Addison, Joseph 184
Ade, George 239–40
Agrippa, Henry Cornelius 178
AIDS/HIV 165–6
Ainsworth, Harrison 7
Rookwood 266
alcohol see drinks
Algren, Nelson: Texas Stories 132
Ali G. (comedy character) 273, 284, 290
Anderson, Nels 132
Anne, Queen 297
anti-Semitism 80, 101, 180
Archibald, Joe 235–6
Are You Being Served (TV programme) 275
Argosy Magazine 232–3
Aristippus 212–13
Askey, Arthur 273
Astor Jr., Mrs William Backhouse 256
Awdeley, John: The Fraternity of Vagabonds 120, 123
Baker, Hylda 273
Barber, Francis 285
Barrie, J.M. 80
Bartlett, John: Dictionary of Americanisms 41
Bayle, Pierre 270
Beale, Paul 259
Beck, F.O.: Hobohemia 132
Bee, Jon 250, 279
Bellem, Robert Leslie 234–5, 237–8, 239, 242, 243
Berman, Otto ‘Abbadabba’ 240–1
Blackadder (TV programme) 275
Black Mask 235, 240, 242
Bly, Nellie (Elizabeth Cochran Seaman) 161
Boake, B.H.T.: ‘Jimmy Wood’ 248–9
body, the 136–63
the arm 148–9
the eye 159–63
the face 153–6
the feet 145–7
the hand & fingers 150–3
the head 137–42
the leg 142–5
the mouth 156–9
Boldrewood, Rolf: Robbery Under Arms 80
Borrow, George 76
Bossidy, John 194
Bowdler, Thomas 18–19
Boxiana: or Sketches of Ancient and Modern Pugilism; from the days of Brougham and Slack to the Heroes of the Present Milling Area (journal) 30–1
boxing 21–35
blood 28–9
blows/punches 27–8
boxers 26–7
as a cross-class sport 25–6
The Fancy (boxing world) 23–4
flash language and 22–4, 33–4, 276
mill/milling 26
Pierce Egan and 29–35
prize-fighter 23
Brecht, Bertolt 150
Brewer, Ephraim: Dictionary of Phrase and Fable 63
Brodie, Steve 60–1
Brown, Cooter 246–7
Bruce, Lenny 2–3, 181
Buckley, William 252
‘Bunter’s Christening, The’ (poem) 247
Burke, William 68
Burley, Dan: Handbook of Harlem Jive 99–100
Burton, Montague 259–60
Bygraves, Max 273
Byron, Lord 24, 29
Caldwell, Erskine: Tobacco Road 104
cant (criminal jargon) and 7, 11, 22, 23, 43, 80, 102, 117, 121, 122, 123–4, 128, 132, 135, 171, 189, 206, 245
Capone, Al 240
Capp, Al: L’il Abner (cartoon strip) 108
Carew, Bampfylde Moore 123–4
Carry On series 8–9, 18, 19–20, 42, 263
Carver, George Washington 201
Casey, Patrick and Terence: Gay-cat 130
catchphrases 272–82
cities and 277–82
comedians and 273–6
defined 272
detectives and 273
ephemeral nature of 276–7
first recorded use of 272–3
London and 277–82
memes and 272
mid-nineteenth century 276–82
‘modern’ 273
music hall and 273
quiz shows and 273, 274, 275
radio comedies and 273, 274
sit-coms and 273, 274–6
Chandler, Raymond 93, 231, 235, 236, 237, 242
Chaucer, Geoffrey 10, 17, 18, 94 Chloé (painting) 247
cities 89–115
alley 112–13
–city suffix 91–2
criminal zones 102–7
importance to slang of 89–90
lane 112, 114–15
law/police and 90–1
nicknames for 92–4
race and 97–102
small town 107–9
street 89–90, 110–12
town 94–7
–ville suffix 109–10
Clinton, George 99
Coborn, Charles 161–2
Conan Doyle, Arthur 273
Copland, Robert: The Hye Waye to the Spytel Hous 121–3, 176
Cotton, Billy 273
Crooke, Dr Helkiah 55
Cruikshank, George 31, 285
D’Avenant, Sir William 18
Dad’s Army (TV programme) 274–5
Daily National Pilot 88
Davies, W.H.:
Adventures of a Supertramp 132
The Adventures of Johnny Walker 134
de Ruby, Péchon: La Vie généreuse des mercelots, gueux, et Boesmiens, contenans leurs facons de vivre, Subtilitez et Gergon (‘The Heroic Life of Beggars and Bohemians’) 119–20
De Vere, Schele 281
Dekker, Thomas 11
O Per Se O 175
Dickens, Charles 6–7, 141, 242
Martin Chuzzlewit 58
Oliver Twist 7, 242
Pickwick Papers 58, 134–5
Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English 259
Dillar, J.L. 146
DJ Smiley Culture: ‘Cockney Translation’ 288
Dorgan, ‘TAD’ (Theodore Aloysius) 239
drinks 204–5, 211-29
geographical links 214–20
gin 221–6
meths 226–9
prison and 220–1 Prohibition 220
proper names 212–14
tea and coffee 204–5
toasts 211–12
drugs/drug user 2, 4
body and 148
cities and 91, 92, 96
doctors and 52, 56, 57, 59–61, 65
love and 70
MLE and 293, 297–8
pulp fiction and 238
tramps/hobos and 117
drunk/drunkard:
body and 138, 139, 161, 162
cities and 115
drink and see drinks
love and 70
maritime slang and 38–9, 40, 44
proper names and 244–60
tramps/hobos and 116, 127, 135
Dryden, John 18, 261
Edward VII, King 214, 296
Egan, Pierce 21, 22, 27, 29–35, 266
Book of Sports 27
Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, revision of 34–5
Life in London 22, 29–32, 33, 285
The Finish to the Adventures of Tom, Jerry and Logic 32
Eighth Liberal Science, The 40
Eliot, T.S. 211
Elizabeth I, Queen 18, 86
Elizabeth II, Queen 297
Enfield, Harry 276
Fancy, the (boxing world) 23–
31
far away places 78–88, 102–3, 106
America 83–5, 87–8
Australia 80–3
Caribbean 83, 86–7
dismissals and 85–6
idea of ‘far, far away’ emerges 78–9
Ireland 88
New Zealand 83
sanctuaries 86–7
small towns 87–8
Timbuktu 80
UK 79
Wales 79–80
Fast Show, The (TV programme) 275–6
FBI 240, 298
Flanagan and Allen 273
flash (language) 22–4, 33–4, 276
Florio, John:
The Worlde of Wordes 17
Valle di Acheronte 13
Flynt, Josiah: Tramping with Tramps 124, 128–9, 130, 131
food, funny foreign 179–210
beef 193
bread 199–200
breakfast 208–9
buckwheat 204
cabbage 194
Chinese food 193–4
cigar 210
dairy products 202–3
desserts 201–2
drinks 204–5
fish 179, 185–6
fruits 197–9
gastro-nationalism 181–2
geography 209–10
gluttony 207
grease 203
meat 179, 186–210
Mexican food 188–9, 194
pasta 183–5
patriotism and 179, 180
pork 191–2
potatoes 195–6
restaurants/places to eat 306–7
rice 203–4
soup 182–3
starvation 208–9
sweets/chocolate 200–1
turkey 189–91
utensils 205–6
vegetables 196–7
wine 210
Formby Senior, George 274
Fracastoro, Girolamo: Syphilis, sive Morbvs Gallicvs (‘Syphilis or the French Disease) 166–7
Funk, W.J. 239
Gay, John: The Beggar’s Opera 122
Gesta Grayorum 17
Gillray, James 181–2
Ginsberg, Ralph 84
Goodrich, Samuel Griswold: The Politician of Podunk 88
Gopnik, Adam 243
Granville, Wilfred: Sea Slang 38
The Stories of Slang: Language at its most human Page 29