Using Period Slang--Part I

 

I’m currently working on a middle-grade novel that takes place in 1894, and I want to use period slang. So how do I make sure it is true to the time?

First, I checked for Internet resources, but I wasn’t happy with what I found. The best was the Historical Dictionary of American Slang at www.alphadictionary.com/slang. but when I put in 1880 through 1890 as a range, I got some terms that I questioned. For example, it gave me “juice” as meaning electricity and “tube” for the telephone. It also said “live wire” was an exciting, energetic person. While the telephone was invented and electricity discovered before then, neither was available to the average person, and I find it hard to believe that slang words for them were in everyday use.

So then I turned to Amazon to find a slang dictionary. I ruled out a number of choices that weren’t very comprehensive, appeared to concentrate on more recent slang, or came in multiple volumes (with the later part of the alphabet not yet published). In the end, I purchased a used 3^rd Edition of the Dictionary of American Slang (Robert L. Chapman, Ed.) from an Amazon seller. While it is not as thorough as the multiple-volume set might have been, it is good enough for my needs.

A particularly helpful feature in the dictionary are the date references. Although a particular usage may have existed before then, the date tells me when it became common. Since my characters wouldn’t have said it before it was in common usage, that ruled out a number of words I might otherwise have used. And if there is no date, that means the editors either couldn’t find one or that the slang is more recent, so I know not to use those terms, either.

Some of the entries are surprising. Words I don’t even think of as slang include “hi,” and “okay.” Both were in play by 1894, but “hi” didn’t come into common usage until 1862. Hopefully I didn’t use that word in my previous works that are set before then, although I wouldn’t have even thought to check. Another surprise is that “rat” and “fink” were both in use by 1894 to mean a despicable person, but the combined “rat fink” came later. It’s amazing what you can learn about language from a slang dictionary.

Next week I’ll talk about some of the dilemmas I face when having my characters use slang. And if you want to know how I came up with the slang words in the graphic at the head of this post, I’ll describe that next week, too.