Slang is the use of highly informal words and expressions that are not considered standard in the speaker's dialect or language.
Few linguists have endeavored to clearly define what constitutes slang. Attempting to remedy this, Bethany K. Dumas and Jonathan Lighter argue that an expression should be considered "true slang" if it meets at least two of the following...
Slang
Quotation Subject
Quotations About This Subject:
- Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
- Dialect words are those terrible marks of the beast to the truly genteel.
- By such innovations are languages enriched, when the words are adopted by the multitude, and naturalized by custom.
- All slang is metaphor, and all metaphor is poetry.
- I've found that there are only two kinds that are any good: slang that has established itself in the language, and slang that you make up yourself. Everything else is apt to be passé before it gets into print.
- Nothing can be more depressing than to expose, naked to the light of thought, the hideous growth of argot. Indeed it is like a sort of repellent animal intended to dwell in darkness which has been dragged out of its cloaca. One seems to see a horned and living creature viciously struggling to be restored to the place where it belongs. One word is like a claw, another like a sightless and bleeding eye; and there are phrases which clutch like the pincers of a crab. And all of it is alive with the hideous vitality of things that have organized themselves amid disorganization.