A Quote by Carl Sandburg
Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.
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I'm just a guy who rolls up his sleeves and goes to work!
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 passe before it gets into print.
In general, American slang is much better than English slang. The entire world picks up American slang.
The sign work of the Orient it runneth up and down; The Talmud stalks from right to left, a rabbi in a gown; The Roman rolls from left to right from Maytime unto May; But the gods shake up their symbols in an absent-minded way. Their language runs to circles like the language of the eyes, Emphasised by strange dilations with little panting sighs.
I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard more and more different kinds of slang during my few weeks' stay in London than in my whole "tenderloin" life in New York. But I suppose the English feel that the language is theirs, and that they may do with it as they please without at the same time allowing that privilege to others.
I beg your pardon: correct English is the slang of prigs who write history and essays. And the strongest slang of all is the slang of poets.
There is something false in this search for a purely feminine writing style. Language, such as it is, is inherited from a masculine society, and it contains many male prejudices. We must rid language of all that. Still, a language is not something created artificially; the proletariat can't use a different language from the bourgeoisie, even if they use it differently, even if from time to time they invent something, technical words or even a kind of worker's slang, which can be very beautiful and very rich. Women can do that as well, enrich their language, clean it up.
It definitely sharpened my interest in language, the way people used language, slang words, speech patterns. There's a big advantage to being the outsider.
The fact that slang is apt and forceful makes its use irresistibly tempting. Coarse or profane slang is beside the mark, but "flivver," "taxi," the "movies," "deadly" (meaning dull), "feeling fit," "feeling blue," "grafter," a "fake," "grouch," "hunch" and "right o!" are typical of words that it would make our spoken language stilted to exclude.
To say yes, you have to sweat and roll up your sleeves and plunge both hands into life up to the elbows. It is easy to say no, even if saying no means death.
I love coverage. My ideal dress would be a turtleneck that goes all the way up to my chin, and then sleeves that go past my fingers. And then the dress goes all the way to the floor, and you see the very tips of my toes.
Wringin' your hands only stops you from rollin' up your sleeves.
You can't wring your hands and roll up your sleeves at the same time.
One night I couldn't sleep at three in the morning and I thought, I'm going to color-coordinate my closet. And I did. There's a whole system. It goes from white to black and then all the colors in the middle. Then it goes by tank tops to T-shirts to long sleeves, and then it goes to the next color. Then it goes to sweaters the same way.
Try and write straight English; never using slang except in dialogue and then only when unavoidable. Because all slang goes sour in a short time. I only use swear words, for example, that have lasted at least a thousand years for fear of getting stuff that will be simply timely and then go sour.
That's one of the ways language evolved, by some very obscure form becoming common usage. And I must say that I'm very intrigued by use of language and slang, and criminal underground terms.
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