Silicon Valley teen slang

[Jesse T Sheidlower]

>
> Generally speaking, when a collection of teenage slang hits the
> periodical press its definitions are dated.  By that time, teenagers
> mostly use the words only for sarcastic effect, suggesting "this guy is
> so far out of it he
> still says 'X' where we say 'Y'. Just say u-huh and walk away."

While newspaper collections of teenage slang are not, in general,
the most reliable sources of linguistic information, even teenage
slang does not change as quickly as it is often alleged to. The
glossary that Allan forwarded appears reasonably authentic, containing
various terms that are still in use in teenage slang despite having
been around for a few years, some newer things I've still heard of,
and some totally new, but not implausible, terms. And, of course, a
few implausible terms as well.

> Still, there's an interesting item in the list:
>
> >     Jabroni (n) -- An idiot; a big-time loser.
> >  That guy's a jabroni because he can never do anything right.
>
> That's a word my father used (although he would have spelled it
> differently); I'd date it to the 1930s at the latest.  His definition
> and spelling would have been "A gibroni is some big, dumb buttinski
> whose name I don't know."
>
> I thought the word was just about extinct.  Does anybody have a sighting
> on how this anachronism turns up in teenage slang today?

The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang has a record
of this word, filed under "jiboney" but listing a number of variant
spellings. We only have one example of an -r- form, listed separately
at "gibroney." The "jiboney" form, in any case, is attested back to
1921, with several examples in _Variety,_ and is found continuously
to the present (our latest example is 1993, in _Vanity Fair,_ and I
think we have more examples that we didn't put in).

It is just this sort of term that demonstrates how long slang can
be current.

Jesse Sheidlower
Random House Reference
<jester at panix.com>