Forbidden Words: Taboo and the Censoring of Language

Bad language? Jargon, slang, swearing and insult 69
1824 Scott, Redgauntlet, ch. xiii. What did actually reach his ears was disguised . . .
completely by the use of cant words, and the thieves-Latin called slang.
1868 Doran, Saints & Sinners I. 107. He [Latimer] occasionally employed some of the
slang of the day to give force to his words.
The word slang first made its appearance some time during the eighteenth
century, originally to refer to the patter of criminals. Its etymology is uncertain.
Some lexicographers have tried to connect it with the Dutch word for
‘snake’, which seems unlikely. Eric Partridge suggests a connection with the
verb sling, as in the expression sling off at someone, meaning ‘give cheek, or
abuse; engage in a slanging match’. 25 This source seems appropriate because
slang originally referred to the sublanguage of the underworld. For us,
Slang is language of a highly colloquial and contemporary type, considered stylistically
inferior to standard formal, and even polite informal, speech. It often uses
metaphor and/or ellipsis, and often manifests verbal play in which current language
is employed in some special sense and denotation; otherwise the vocabulary, and
sometimes the grammar, is novel or only recently coined.
Both of the terms argot and cant appear in discussions of slang, and
their relevant senses overlap completely with our definitions of jargon and
slang. The OED has for argot: ‘The jargon, slang, or peculiar phraseology of
a class, orig. that of thieves and rogues.’ The word was borrowed from
French, where it is the usual translation for English slang. However, like
English jargon, it often refers to the language of traditionally nomadic
occupational groups such as actors, beggars, chimney-sweeps, gypsies,
masons, sailors, soldiers and thieves. 26 For cant the OED has: ‘The peculiar
language or jargon of a class: a. The secret language or jargon used by
gipsies, thieves, professional beggars, etc.; transf. any jargon used for the
purpose of secrecy.’ The term cant is probably cognate with chant (from
French chanter, Latin cantare).
[It was] first applied to the tones and language of beggars, ‘the canting crew’: this,
which according to Harman was introduced c.1540, may have come down from the
religious mendicants; or the word may have been actually made from Lat[in] or
Romanic in the rogues’ jargon of the time. The subsequent development assumed in
the arrangement of the verb is quite natural, though not actually established. Some
have however conjectured that cant is the Irish and Gaelic cainnt (pronounced kaJtj, or
nearly kantSj) ‘language’. (OED)
So the term cant very possibly arises from Romance, from which its meaning
was extended as a result of contact with the Celtic homonym, the two coming
together in the meaning ‘language of gipsies, thieves, and professional
beggars’ – who, so far as speakers of the standard language are concerned,
were despised social (and actual) outlaws. We shall not make further use of