Word: argot
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...French Riviera. He became interested in the subject when the daughter of a close friend got involved in a messy divorce. After the couple separated, the estranged husband, Daniel Guy, a real estate operator in Nice, allegedly threatened his wife by hinting of his connections with the milieu, local argot for the Nice underworld. Greene tells a harrowing tale of purported assaults on Guy's wife and her father, the kidnaping of the couple's child by Guy, and threats, including a heavy hint by Guy that Greene might be in an auto accident if he kept...
That same bitterness, powerfully expressed, lies at the heart of nearly every conversation John Gwaltney has recorded in his new book, whose title means "ordinary" in one American Black argot. One man, a coal miner, says this of whites: "Just thinking about them makes me feel like I have swallowed shit. I mean, a rat or a maggot is better than the best white cat who ever drew breath. Just looking at those things makes me want to spit up. Everything they do is rotten." Or this from a cook: "These people hide their dirt or make everybody...
Mann finds ways of translating these existential thoughts into the argot of the Chicago ex-con that are reasonably believable; and James Caan finds ways of saying them without choking. Indeed, at the center of the film there is a fine scene when Frank proposes to Jessie (Tuesday Weld), a coffee-shop cashier astonished to have an offer of marriage on her first date with the guy from the back booth, and to find out what he actually does for a living. Here Mann gets a subtler message across, in a scene with comedy, originality and dramatic power as played...
...formal causes of this separation are no great secret to anyone-busing, housing, crime, the normal distances between the too rich and the too poor. Terms like white flight and steering have become so comfortable in the national argot that one almost forgets that they are weapons. Affirmative action has helped split black and white as well, particularly black and blue collar and black and Jew, on the issue of quotas. Then too there are the white lies told daily in the universities by fainthearted, if well-meaning, professors writing false recommendations for unprepared black students for jobs in which...
...Dictionary of Unconventional Russian: Argot, Jargon and Slang. Formerly a writer, translator and dissident in the Soviet Union, Kirill V. Uspensky first heard many of the words in his files while serving in a Russian labor camp. He has now collected nearly 20,000 words, many of which have hidden political meanings. W.L.W...