What are the 15 reasons people use slang according to British lexicographer Eric Partridge?
In Chapter 2 of his early work, Slang: Today and Yesterday (New York: Macmillan, 1934), British lexicographer Eric Partridge (1894-1979) writes that people use slang for any of at least 15 reasons: • In sheer high spirits, by the young in heart as well as by the young in years; ‘just for the fun of the thing’; in playfulness or waggishness. • As an exercise either in wit and ingenuity or in humor. (The motive behind this is usually self-display or snobbishness, emulation or responsiveness, delight in virtuosity). • To be ‘different’, to be novel. • To be picturesque (either positively or – as in the wish to avoid insipidity – negatively). • To be unmistakably arresting, even startling. • To escape from clichés, or to be brief and concise. (Actuated by impatience with existing terms.) • To enrich the language. (This deliberateness is rare save among the well-educated, Cockneys forming the most notable exception; it is literary rather than spontaneous.) • To lend an air of solidity, conc
In Chapter 2 of his early work, Slang: Today and Yesterday (New York: Macmillan, 1934), British lexicographer Eric Partridge (1894-1979) writes that people use slang for any of at least 15 reasons: • In sheer high spirits, by the young in heart as well as by the young in years; ‘just for the fun of the thing’; in playfulness or waggishness. • As an exercise either in wit and ingenuity or in humor. (The motive behind this is usually self-display or snobbishness, emulation or responsiveness, delight in virtuosity). • To be ‘different’, to be novel. • To be picturesque (either positively or – as in the wish to avoid insipidity – negatively). • To be unmistakably arresting, even startling. • To escape from clichés, or to be brief and concise. (Actuated by impatience with existing terms.) • To enrich the language. (This deliberateness is rare save among the well-educated, Cockneys forming the most notable exception; it is literary rather than spontaneous.) • To lend an air of solidity, conc
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