Becoming Quote by Ricky Jay

The earliest dictionaries were collections of criminal slang, swapped amongst ne'er-do-wells as a means of evading the authorities or indeed any outsider who might…

— Susie Dent

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

— John Galsworthy

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

My life changed forever when I found out the word slang was actually slang for shortened language

— Ramandeep Singh

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…

— David Crystal

The fact that slang is apt and forceful makes its use irresistibly tempting. Coarse or profane slang is beside the mark, but "flivver," "taxi,"…

— Emily Post

Slang is a language that rolls up its sleeves, spits on its hands and goes to work.

— Carl Sandburg

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…

— Scott Westerfeld

Words are seductive and dangerous material, to be used with caution.

— Barbara Tuchman

“I found cause to wonder upon what ground the English accuse Americans of corrupting the language by introducing slang words. I think I heard…

— James Weldon Johnson

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…

— Raymond Chandler

What's really interesting about that is that a lot of these words that were incendiary in their time now seem almost harmless and laughable,…

— Philip Kaufman