How many people use slang

As editor Jeffrey Sherwood explains, the OED once ran ads in newspapers that asked readers, when they came across an unusual word, to write it down and send it in. In recent years, the process has gone online and changed shape: rather than asking the public to help the editors collect evidence about specific words, the OED has been appealing to the public for examples that fit a category.

The slang appeal, which launched around the start of the school year, has so far yielded more than submissions, including terms such as snatched and lowkey. The latter, which appears deceptively familiar, shows just how hard slang is to pin down. Low-key , an adjective meaning muted or restrained, has been around for the better part of a century.

But for some years now, the hipper among us have also been using it as an adverb. So what do they mean? And they will likely do a better job if the public lends a hand. It may turn out that the newer lowkey can be traced back to a particular demographic, revealing something about the flow and tug of culture and language.

Much American slang has gone mainstream after being invented by African Americans. And slang terms are often used to forge bonds in subcultures, as well as in-crowds and youth. The history of a word like cool , for one, is not just about a gap between generations but representation and appropriation. He suspects the term, which is used to mean perfect or on point, originally comes out of drag-queen culture — perhaps suggesting something is so shockingly good that it warrants the expression one would make if a wig were snatched off their head.

While LOL has long been an entry in the so-called urban dictionary, its common use also earned the term a place as an official acronym in the English dictionary in Such is its popularity that other languages have begun to incorporate the term into their own speech, and it is not uncommon now to hear people interject sentences in their own language with LOL — or other internet slang words.

Other languages have their own versions of a laughing abbreviation, perhaps inspired by the English language LOL. And just as classic terms such as LOL and OMG oh my God were questioned for their potential for dumbing down the English language, it still happens today. If you feel confident enough to start using English internet slang when writing and speaking the language, here are a few more terms that are trending right now:.

Which English internet slang terms have you heard recently? Slang is typically cultivated among people in society who have little real political power like adolescents, college students, and enlisted personnel in the military or who have reason to hide from people in authority what they know or do like gamblers, drug addicts, and prisoners.

For a slang to retain its vitality and social purchase, it needs to be continuously evolving. This is true of all language but particularly so of countercultural slangs. The jargons associated with certain professions and activities, like the varieties of slang featured so far in this section, serve to reinforce a sense of group identity.

What does Nigel White focus on in his description of the language of the different sectors he mentions? In the next part of this section you will look more closely at how language is used in the workplace and at what point specialist terminology becomes jargon.

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