Quotes About Slang

There is not a metaphor, not an analogy, in slang, which does not contain a lesson.

Australians say 'pissed off.' Pissed means drunk. Piss is alcohol. To take the piss--that means to send someone up, make fun of them.

This shit is easy peasy, pumpkin peasy, pumpkin pie, muthafucka!

This shit is easy peasy pumpkin peasey...Pumpkin pie, motherfucker.

All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.

My first album was mainly dealing with street issues, and it was 'coded': it was called 'Reasonable Doubt.' So the things I was talking about... I was talking about in slang, and it was something that people in the music business was not really privy to. They didn't understand totally what I was saying or what I was talking about.

Booze' was once a popular term in the slang or 'cant' of the criminal underworld, which may explain its rebellious overtones today.

Gag me with a spoon!

What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.

The fuck?" he said. "The fuck?" said Jess. "The fuck what?" "It's an American abbreviation," said Martin. " «The fuck?» means «What the fuck?» In America, they're so busy that they don't have time to say the «what».

Charlie himself had had many homes, going so far back that he only had the vaguest, haziest memories of them. A man, even a man like Charlie Valentine, had limited room for memories, and the new ones kept kicking the old ones out, the way slang replaces the proper names for this or for that, cheapening the nouns and the verbs until they were barely recognizable.

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

They said "whar" for where, "thar "for there, "critter" for creature, "nekkid" for naked, "wider" for widow, and "younguns" for young ones. They were always "fixin" to do something, or go "sparkin" instead of courting, and the younguns "growed up" instead of grew up. Children were referred to as "little shits".

Treacle? What does it mean?' Roscoe grinned. 'Cockney rhyming slang. Treacle as in treacle tart as in sweetheart.

explained Conway, "is a slang word meaning a lazy fellow, a good-for-nothing.

Lots of people speak Afrikaans. It's not a statement; it's just a language that we use to communicate. It has its own flavour; it's got its own slang. People laugh. People like it. They like us being open.

Other dances are like languages, like French or Spanish, but my steps are slang, and slang is always changing.

Slang, too, is the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently chrystallize.

'Recreative' is a word that I invented because in urban culture, with colloquialism, we invent so many slangs. I don't like the way that 'recreational' sounds - I don't like to say I do a lot of 'recreational' reading. I like to say that I read 'recreatively.' I do a lot of 'recreative' reading.

Slang moves on so fast that most new words disappear soon after they are coined. But there is always something that sticks behind.

I am getting rather astonishing in my Italian conversation. I believe I talk a mixture of Dante and the worst modern slang.

She had since grown used to some of the insular codes and cryptic slang of surfers, even the grunts and roars and horrible snarls, but she still didn't understand why, after spending hours studying the waves from shore, we often announced our intention to paddle out by saying things like, "Let's get it over with." She could see the reluctance—clammy wetsuit, icy water, rough, lousy surf. She just couldn't see the grim compunction. Once

There's an old little jingle: 'The chief use of slang is to show that you're one of the gang.' What that means is that every social group has its own linguistic bonding mechanism. If there's a group of lawyers, they have their own slang. If there's a group of doctors, they have their own slang, and so on.

I found a great book called 'Slang Through the Ages' by Jonathon Green. It's basically a thesaurus of historical slang, and had lots of great old uses.