"slang" and "informal" as dict labels [WAS: shirty?]

[Michael Quinion]

Frank Abate wrote:

> How do you folks understand the distinction between "slang" and
> "informal" -- specifically when used as labels given with
> dictionary definitions?

I have to confess I didn't stop to think about this: I just borrowed
the tag from NODE when responding to the original question. My gut
feeling is that "shirty" is too well-established and widely used to
be classed as slang and yet isn't really formal standard English.

It's in the same category as "kid" for child, which was once low
slang, but which has has now gained a large measure of respectability
(and which NODE also classes as "informal").

NODE defines "informal" for this purpose as "normally used only in
contexts such as conversations or letters between friends", which
seems potentially to cover as much ground and cause as much confusion
as the deprecated term "slang".

Any difficulty arises because of the need to find a balance between
formal linguistic descriptions and simple terminology that is easily
communicable to and understandable by the non-specialist user of
dictionaries. I suspect that any attempt at a simple classification
would be equally open to disagreement.

--
Michael Quinion
Editor, World Wide Words
E-mail: <TheEditor at worldwidewords.org>
Web: <http://www.worldwidewords.org/>