Word: slang
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...noun," he advised, "and should never be used as an adjective or verb. To speak of 'Jew girls' or 'Jew stories' is both objectionable and vulgar. The use of the word Jew as a verb-'to Jew down'-is a slang survival of the medieval term of opprobrium, and should be avoided altogether...
...many platforms: as novelist and short-story writer, poet and playwright, community planner, sociologist, psychotherapist, teacher (mostly at Columbia University). He began his fulminations against organized society in his fiction, in which a jumble of ideas is loosely arranged into plots. All the characters talk the same Goodmanese, part slang, part preaching. "Allow me. I will explain it to you" is a typical conversational gambit. Horatio Alger, the hero of Goodman's biggest novel, The Empire City, pilfers all the cards on file on him in the city, for 20 years prowls about New York in a perfect state...
...does not take the reader long to realize that he is in the hands of a Brazilian Boccaccio (whose book is marred now and then by his translators' foolish fondness for gringo slang). It is no surprise, therefore, when Gabriela appears-the laughing, barefoot, round-rumped omnamorata who turns up in the bawdy literature of every language. Who is Gabriela's husband? Naturally he is fat Nacib, the saloonkeeper. Who crawls in Nacib's window when Nacib is tending bar? No one but oily Tonico, the seducer. Will Tonico succeed in getting back out when Nacib comes...
Nobody is sure just what it is, or even what its name implies: according to various experts, the Portuguese slang expression bossa nova can mean "the latest thing" or "the new beat" or "the new wrinkle." Bossa literally means a protuberance, but in the argot of Rio, it connotes a natural talent or knack, as in the line, "The Duke has a lot of bossa." The only points everybody is agreed on are that 1) bossa nova is a weird crossbreeding of cool jazz with chili-peppered Latin rhythms and 2) it is big, and getting even bigger...
...agers, says the Rev. Andrew Greeley, a sociologist and assistant pastor of Chi cago's Christ the King Roman Catholic parish, "there is a hunger to find some thing of significance or meaning. These kids are haunted, but they are hunting." Church leaders have tried composing prayers in slang for the generation raised by Dick Clark - so far with little success...