A Quote by John Galsworthy

Slang is vigorous and apt. Probably most of our vital words were once slang.

John Galsworthy

Quote Topics

Apt Most Once Our Slang Vigorous Vital Were Words

Quote Author

John Galsworthy
English - Novelist
August 14, 1867 - January 31, 1933

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.

Emily Post

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.

George Eliot

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.

Raymond Chandler

In general, American slang is much better than English slang. The entire world picks up American slang.

Jesse Sheidlower

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.

David Crystal

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

Savion Glover

Hit records create slang, and if you create slang, you get into a broader conversation level.

No I.D.

Slang has always moved this way. From Cockney rhyming slang to codes swapped among highwaymen, they're tribal badges of identity, bonding mechanisms designed to distinguish the initiated, and to keep strangers out.

Susie Dent

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.

Scott Westerfeld

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.

Ernest Hemingway

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.

James Weldon Johnson

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

Susie Dent

The British have slang words, as we do, but it was fun.

Dennis Farina

I make up many words but we can go on for forever about slang words that E-40 created. That has always been one of my things since was youngster. I have always being creative with my words.