Domesticated slang

[Baker, John]

Although there are a few such words - "jazz"comes immediately to mind – the percentage must be well under 1%. And even "jazz" is necessarily an outlier, because its passage from sign to standard English was accompanied by a change in meaning. Jazz words usually have standard English counterparts, and it must be unusual for the standard English term to be displaced by the slang term.


John Baker


> On Aug 5, 2014, at 7:27 AM, "Michael Sheehan" <000000e73f3db4b1-dmarc-request at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU> wrote:
> 
> Can anyone give me an approximate percentage of English words that started out as slang but then became accepted as standard? 
> 
> Michael Sheehan
> theseniorcorner.weebly.com
> 
> 
> 
> 
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