Some London slang terms - origins?

George Thompson george.thompson at NYU.EDU
Mon Jul 11 14:30:20 UTC 2011


Bare, blud, (not blad) and bruv are all in Green's Dictionary of Slang; so
is boy, but since Kerswill doesn't indicate the meaning of any of these,
who's to know whether Green has the sense he's looking for.

Green's Dictionary is available in better libraries everywhere, perhaps even
one in Lancaster.

GAT

On Sun, Jul 10, 2011 at 4:16 PM, Damien Hall <D.Hall at kent.ac.uk> wrote:

> PLEASE NOTE MY NEW E-MAIL ADDRESS / PRIÈRE DE NOTER MA NOUVELLE ADRESSE
> ÉLECTRONIQUE
>
> A friend, Paul Kerswill, has asked me to cross-post the following query
> here.  I've told him about the thread here on 'mommanem' some years ago, as
> 'mandem' in his list reminded me of it.  If anyone can help Paul, please
> copy both him and the list in on your replies.  Paul's e-mail is
>
> p.kerswill at lancaster.ac.uk
>
> and he's copied in here too.
>
> "LONDON TEENAGE SLANG: Does anyone know the *origins* of: olders, bare,
> safe, blud/blad, bruv, yute, rude, boy, ends, mandem, boys dem, still,
> sweet?
>
> By ‘origins’ I obviously mean etymology, but of greater concern to me is
> the route by which they entered London and also their current status there.
>
> These crop up in our London teenage corpora. Urban Dictionary isn’t much
> help with most of them!"
>
> Thanks!
>
> Damien
>
> --
>
> Damien Hall
>
> University of Kent (UK / Royaume-Uni)
> Leverhulme Early Career Fellow, 'Towards a New Linguistic Atlas of France'
> Projet de recherche: 'Vers un Nouvel Atlas Linguistique de la France'
>
> English Language and Linguistics, School of European Culture and Languages
> Section de Langue et Linguistique Anglaises, Faculté de la Culture et des
> Langues Européennes
>
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org
>



-- 
George A. Thompson
Author of A Documentary History of "The African Theatre", Northwestern Univ.
Pr., 1998, but nothing much since then.

------------------------------------------------------------
The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org



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