slang

Definitions  ·  Examples  ·  Pronunciations  ·  Etymologies  ·  Related  ·  Statistics  ·  Comments (3)  · 
Montana weather and Montana slang are the two richest crops in the State The past two months had been unbroken by any event of marked importance.

View all »
Definitions (28)

Toggle American Heritage definitions American Heritage Dictionary (5)

  1. noun A kind of language occurring chiefly in casual and playful speech, made up typically of short-lived coinages and figures of speech that are deliberately used in place of standard terms for added raciness, humor, irreverence, or other effect.
  2. noun Language peculiar to a group; argot or jargon: thieves' slang.
  3. intransitive verb To use slang.

Toggle Century definitions Century Dictionary (13)

Toggle GNU Webster definitions GNU Webster's 1913 (5)

Toggle WordNet definitions WordNet (5)

Toggle elsewhere links Elsewhere on the web

View all »
Examples (32)

  • Copacetic, Consul Sommon would probably have said in American slang. —  process 10
  • In China, when you get to the airport everyone be talking in American slang. —  Chinalyst - China blogs in English
  • Probably due to this working process, the "lathe-slitting machine" is usually referred to as "a baloney slicer," in American slang, similar to watching cold-cuts sliced at the grocery.
  • When Ohad Naharin, the artistic director of Israel's Batsheva Dance Company, developed a technique for training dancers and named it Gaga, I'm pretty sure he wasn't taking into account the word's meaning in English slang. —  Village Voice - The most recent 10 stories
  • In Australian slang, "to root" means what "to screw" means in American slang. —  Libertarian Blog Place
 

Tags

slang hasn't been tagged yet.

Sign up or sign in to add tags.

Words tagged slang

winkakke · blivit · strides · butchers · dickbutt · pom · bonza · wassup · computermabob · tsouris · varmint

More »

Stats

This word has been looked up 252 times.

On Twitter

Photos from

flickr images

Etymologies (5)

Toggle American Heritage etymologies American Heritage Dictionary (1)

  1. Origin unknown.

Toggle Century etymologies Century Dictionary (4)

  1. Origin obscure; perhaps, like slanket, connected with slank, slim, and ult. with sling.
  2. Of obscure cant origin; the form suggests a connection with sling, in a way indicated by the use of sling and fling in ‘to sling epithets,’ ‘to fling reproaches,’ etc., and by similar uses of related Scandinavian forms, as Norwegian sleng, a slinging, a device, a burden of a song; slengja, sling (slengja kjeften, abuse, literally ‘sling the jaw’); slengjenamn, a nickname; slengje-ord, an insulting word or allusion; Icelandic slyngr, slyngum, cunning: see sling. The noun, in this view, must have arisen in quasi-composition (slang-patter, slang-word, slang-name, etc.), or else from the verb. Evidence of early use is lacking. The word has nothing to do with language or lingo, and there is no evidence to establish a Gipsy origin.
  3. from slang, n.
  4. Origin obscure and various; cf. slang, slang.
 

Pronunciations
Record your own »

/slæŋ/
by American Heritage

Charts

frequency chart

Bubble size: how much this word was used in a year

Bubble height: used more or less than expected, vs. all uses evenly distributed

You can expect to see this word about once a week.

Recently looked up

cryptology · hewer · Heracles · granary · low-noise

Recent Favorites

pygopagus · sanglant · Astacus · sweetbread · qualms

Recent Pronunciations

britney · bunda · settii · aithníonn ciaróg ciaróg eile · an sionnach i gcraiceann na caorach