The writing of this paper started with the aim of exploring American slang vocabulary, focusing on one specific sector of words. The idea soon crystallized around the theme "slang vocabulary of deceitful activity, i.e. cheating and lying, in American English". The actual writing process, however, brought evident problems into daylight concerning this formulation of the subject of research.

Firstly, and most importantly, the source material used (see Works Cited at the end of the paper) seemed to disagree on the use of many expressions, and an overall trend of semantic shift of single expressions through time could be noticed by consulting the source material published at different times during the last two decades. Secondly, there was much general confusion about the actual "slanginess" of most of the expressions found.

This last problem brought the writing process back to its very roots; it was necessary to clarify the actual concept slang, and its use. It was very important to draw a distinctive line between slang and mere colloquialisms. The definition that Chambers Encyclopedic English Dictionary gives to slang is: "words and phrases used only very informally, not usually in writing or polite speech, and often only by members of a particular social group or profession."

This definition was a good starting point, but not adequately precise to really draw the distinction that was needed. More clarification was found elsewhere. Some common characteristics of slang are its built-in unorthodoxy (as opposed to the formal written and spoken language of the entire society), enforcing a certain intimacy between its users (and thus performing an important social function of including or excluding people from some social circle), its way of encoding some shared experience or common outlook to speech, and its elusiveness (Thorne, Introduction iii). The last of these three aspects, elusiveness, was considered especially important from the viewpoint of the writing of this paper (or any other research work on slang).

If it is taken as a premise that slang, as some kind of a form of heightenedly spoken language, is under constant (often very rapid) evolution, it should be clearly seen that a research work on slang per se is doomed to inappropriateness and inaccuracy. Rather, a paper should either concentrate on the description of the slang of some particular time and some particular social group, or then focus on the general characteristics of slang, being in this way metalinguistic work.

Finding both of these alternatives impossible or unrealistic, the writing process was forced to return the focus on where it started from - on words. Now, however, with the distinction that the aim of the paper would be to map slang and colloquial expressions used in America, taking historical usage into account where possible.

The slang and colloquial expressions that will occur in the text are distinguished from other text with the use of boldface (e.g. crap). Italics is used where words are referred to as words, and to signify the cases where words function in the sentence through the significance of their particular meaning primarily, as well as in the cases of distinguishing a particular suffix or other grammatical construction from the text body.

The paper will be divided into sections according to the different aspects of deceitful activity examined. Thus, the general vocabulary of lying will receive its own section, as well as the vocabulary of cheating. A brief conclusion will be provided to assess the fulfilment of the aims of the paper, and to possibly further discuss some general problems that arose during the writing process.

Lying

To bullshit is to try to impress, persuade, bamboozle or deceive with empty, boastful and portentous talk. The most usual variants are the shortened bullsh and BS, and the less offensive bull. The basic meaning of the noun bullshit tends towards nonsense, blatant or offensive falsehood. To the same category belong horse shit and its variant horse manure, and the shortened form hocky. Bullshit and its variants are very often used in short declarative sentences, but the effectiveness of the word has perhaps been slightly waning through recent decades, and it is quite widely used by social groups and classes of all orders today.

False, imprecise and untruthful talk or information are referred to as shit, crap, crock, crock of shit, claptrap. Crapola, an embellishment of crap, is misleading or worthless information. The suffix -ola is an imitation of a Spanish word ending, and adds the sense of big and bad to the word body. Shit, crap and crock all function as verbs of very similar use as their noun forms. Especially shit and crap are very widely spread, being in everyday use in multiple social layers. This is only too clearly exemplified by the American film industry today.

Nonsense, or simply a lie, has names like jive, jazz, hokum, hooey, story, balooney. Jive and jazz can have an overtone of nonsense or hilarious or just funny things being said, and function both as a verb and as a noun. Fib is a white lie or a quickly invented, somewhat transparent excuse, today in common colloquial use. A particularly thick and insolent lie is called whopper, or hogwash.

Fairy tale denotes an incredible, unbelievable explanation. A deceitful lie with the function of misleading the listener about the speaker or his activities is called a cover, smoke, string, or line. All these words seem to have at least some indirect or metaphoric connection to the act of storytelling. Kidding, from the originally American kid for a child, is innocent and usually well-meaning lying, cheating, bluffing.

Food and eating, and ultimately the process of digestion, also function as a metaphor for lying: marmalade (transferred from British English), spinach, and tripe as nouns all have the basic meaning of lie. Vanilla, from the 1980s onwards, has been used to indicate false or pseudo, as an adjective.

A dishonest person is crooked, bent, shady, fishy, shifty, not kosher, or a gyp, crooked stick, crum, crumb, fish or on the make, on the take or on the pad. Not kosher refers to the Jewish tradition of kosher (appropriate) food, and has probably evolved after WW2, due to the Jewish impact in America. Gyp is derived from gypsy, and has also a wider meaning of a nomad, hippie or villain. It dates back both to old British usage, and to the hippie era of the late sixties and early seventies of the twentieth century.

Cheating

There are many terms for cheating. The all-time favorite slang expressions fuck and screw have been traced back to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries (in their basic meanings) in written text, but as expressions for cheating their history is shorter. It can be supposed that the secondary meanings for the words only flourished after the primary meanings were firmly established and in wide use. Shaft, another cheating term with its basic slang connotation in sex, is not nearly as common as the two other ones. Frig and fudge belong to the same category.

Slang words with their primary meaning in cheating include rook, fork, hype, hose, bunk, ream and rim. To string is to cheat, deceive, sham. Longer expressions include jerk one off (or around), dick one around, fuck one over, run a game on and throw the bull. Their source - the sexual and sexuality - ought to be self-evident.

Shit and bullshit, also used to mean cheating and lying, are in very wide use. More original expressions for the same act are: pigeondrop, ike, sandbag, bum steer and hurdy. Murphy presumably originates from the famous U.S. army officer Edward Murphy and his famous Murphy’s law.

To soak or hold up is to take over the price of an item in a sale.

Unfaithfulness and the acts therewith have received many dear names: cross, double-xross, double-X, XX, double banker, fast shuffle, skin game, fast one, cutie, claptrap, line of cheese, borax and song.

The most usual expressions for having been cheated are probably screwed, fucked, fucked over, and jerked around. Both the words fucked and screwed have their primary source of meaning in sexual activity, and carry in this way a load of emotional charge, being thus suitable for expressing the strong feelings of anger and shame that are also associated with having been cheated.

Been had, (been) taken, (been) took, aced out, gyped, stiffed, skinned, shafted, foxed and conned are all less common terms for the same poor state of affairs. Stiffed, skinned and shafted all have their primary meaning in the area of physical abuse and violence. Con, a shortening from confidence-trick was regarded as slang in the 1950s, and is a venerable colloquial term today.

Diddled, clipped, burned, fleeced, shaved, gouged, chiseled, juiced, gassed, bilked, buffaloed, hippoed and snookered all seem to bear some direct or indirect connotation to physical abuse, all with the common meaning cheated.

Conclusion

The aim of the paper was, during the writing process, reduced down (or widened up) to mapping slang and colloquial expressions of lie and cheat, and taking their historical usage into account where possible. This aim has, though only partially, been reached. Some relatively evident defects should be identified.

Firstly, all the listings are very incomplete. This is partly due to the very nature of slang, its elusiveness and the constant evolution and invention it goes through, partly due to the ever so incomplete and not necessarily up-to-date source material, partly due to sheer lack of time. A more thorough paper would have required more intensive research, which would have consumed a tremendous chunk of time, which was, after all, judged unnecessary when the extent of the actual paper was considered.

Secondly, the clearcut distinction between slang expressions and more common colloquial expressions that was one of the primary objectives could not in most cases be reached. Again, the same factors listed above affected the imperfect outcome. Furthermore, in some cases it was impossible to know whether a word was of American, or only of British use. Again, more specific source material might have helped to solve the problem.

But after all, many interesting and saucy expressions were found – and it can’t be said that the research was in vain.

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Works Cited

• Chambers Encyclopedic English Dictionary. Edinburgh: Chambers, 1st edition, 1994.
• Lewin, Esther. The Thesaurus of Slang. New York: Facts On File Publications, 1988.
• Rekiaro, Ilkka. Amerikanenglannin slangisanakirja. Porvoo: WSOY, 1995.
• Thorne, Tony. Dictionary of Contemporary Slang. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 1997.

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Last Updated 08 March 2004