The 1920s Fascination with Slang
Susanna Calkins, author of the “Lucy Campion Historical Mysteries” and “Speakeasy Murders,” discusses the slang of the 1920s and how it affected culture, conversation, and even dictionaries!
Susanna Calkins, Writing for
Throughout the 1920s, the public was fascinated, if a bit confused, by the slang that was steadily seeping into the American parlance from all directions. In newspapers across the country, commentators wrote hundreds of articles and editorials seeking to enlighten readers about the meaning of words spoken by “College Joes,” cops and ex-servicemen, prize fighters and baseball players, railway workers and taxi drivers, flappers and gangsters, jazz singers and musicians, and even circus performers.
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These commentaries are mostly light-hearted, written tongue-in-cheek by outsiders trying to explain the argots of others. Yet, a sense of confusion and puzzlement underlies many of these explanations as well. This may be because so much slang of the period was indeed nonsense (“elephant’s manicure,” “oyster’s earrings,” ”snake’s hips,” etc.), which was part of the larger trend of meaninglessness and absurdity that followed the devastation of the First World War.
Not surprising, the disconnect is also generational—an uneasiness towards the modern flapper who sought to upend traditional expectations around womanhood and sexuality. Slang words and phrases associated with dating, such as “blind date,” “petting,” “necking,” and “petting parlors” (movie theaters) were regularly discussed with amusement and, one can imagine, a slightly arched eyebrow.
1920s slang is the bee’s knees!
An early example of this generational confusion is “Sunday Morning Breakfast,” a humorous piece by Rob Fukerson that appeared in the “Detroit Free Press” in 1922. The scenario describes a father desperately trying to make sense of the conversation that his daughter Lucy, a flapper, is having with his son. Lucy has been reading the social pages, and has wondered out loud how a rather dull friend of hers has managed to get engaged.
Only his daughter didn’t use those words; what she actually said was that her friend’s fiancé is “some darb she picked up at a jazz jamboree. Her regular monog was away some place and she had this strike breaker doing her corn cracking at a party and hooked him. I always thought she was a permanent flat tire, but she vamped him in a dance and then had a conservative petting party with him and now he is going to be a permanent meal ticket.” The father just stammers and stares. His children basically laugh at him, and continue to use slang that only confuses him more. The implication is that the father will never really understand their words.
Interestingly, in 1925, Ada Lewis, a self-proclaimed “mistress of modern slang,” wrote a piece for “The Washington Post” comparing the “Jargon of the Juveniles,” from Grandma, Mother, and Daughter. She even provided a helpful chart which, if accurate, certainly helps explain the words and phrases when two are compared with the third:
| Country | ||
|---|---|---|
|
Grandma |
Mother |
Daughter |
|
Charmer |
Vamp |
Red-hot mama |
|
Hot air |
Spoofing |
Apple sauce |
|
Wall flower |
Dead one |
Flat tire |
|
Heart breaker |
Lady killer |
Sheik |
|
The laugh |
Merry ha-ha |
Raspberries |
|
Dude |
Sport |
Cake-eater |
|
Four-flusher |
Sponge |
Lounge-lizard |
|
Sparking |
Spooning |
Petting |
|
Cutie |
Chicken |
Flapper |
|
Good for you! |
Bully! |
Attaboy! |
|
Quit yer kiddin’ |
Lay off |
Be yourself |
|
Up stage |
Putting on the dog |
Ritzy |
|
Ah, there |
O you kiddo! |
Hot dog! |
|
The goods |
The cheese |
Cat’s meow |
|
Guy |
Poor simp |
Poor fish |
|
Beat it |
Skiddoo |
Ankle along |
|
Poor sport |
Tight-wad |
Cheap skate |
Similar explanations and definitions of slang continued to appear regularly in the country’s newspapers. Even more interesting, in 1926 William Craigie, a professor at the University of Chicago, began to work on the Dictionary of American English, collecting millions of slips of paper “from layman and students” alike, that detailed descriptions of the meanings of words. (This work was published over a decade later, in four volumes). While Craigie was not intentionally seeking out slang, he acknowledged to “The Boston Globe” that “a small percentage of the slang of one generation will be the usual speech of the next and will in the end become a natural part of the written language.”
By the end of the decade, other smaller dictionaries of slang had appeared, often more informational in tone. For example in 1928 Frank Wilstach, the author of A Dictionary of Similes, created a dictionary of motion picture slang that helps explain the language of the “talkies.” Some of these terms were new to the industry, but others came out of the older tradition of live theater. These include such phrases as “America’s sweetheart” (referring to actress Mary Pickford); a “bust” (when a picture doesn’t do well); “in sync” (sound and action perfectly timed in a “talky”); “kill the lights” (turn out the lights); and “hit the deck,” (when electricians come down after working on electric lights above the set.)
These commentaries collectively allude to the tensions around slang, and the need to defend it against those purists who lament its use. As Glenn Frank noted in a 1926 article for “The Washington Post,”
“Slang is by no means the cultural sin it is sometimes branded. The slang of everyday life is a rich source of new words. Slang is language in the making. Slang is the sign of life in a language. Slang is imagination at work in words. Our mother tongue would become a septic and stagnant pool if slang did not pour fresh streams into it.”
In other words, 1920s slang is the bee’s knees!