Word of the Day
Argot (AHR-goh)
The expressions or slang of a particular group
Common clues: Professional slang; Insider's vocabulary; Lingo; Groupspeak, e.g
Crossword puzzle frequency: 3 times a year
Frequency in English language: 64213 / 86800
Argot (French for "slang") is primarily slang used by various groups, including but not limited to thieves and other criminals, to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. For example: "He philosophized and recited baseball statistics in a Brooklyn argot that was fast-fading." Bruce Sterling defines argot as "the deliberately hermetic language of a small knowledge clique.... a super-specialized geek cult language that has no traction in the real world."
The
vocabulary of baseball, probably more than that of any other
sport, is as popular in figurative use throughout the society as
is the argot of the theater and other entertainments or the cant
of the underworld. To strike out, to be a bush leaguer [or
just to be bush], to balk, to bat three hundred [or,
hyperbolically, a thousand], to give [or] get an
assist, to pinch hit, to score, to shut out, to begin a whole new
ball game, or to be off base, to be in left field, or
to be a screwball, to have somebody throw you a curve, and
many, many more words and phrases have come into the general
vocabulary from baseball’s slang and argot. –
Kenneth Wilson, The Columbia
Guide to Standard American English.
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article "Argot".
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