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In a world full of “goofy ahh,” “skibidi,” and “Ohio rizz” brainrot, it’s only natural to grow tired of TikTok lingo and crave a more refined lexicon to revitalize your silver tongue! With the slang of today leaving much to be desired in the realm of sophistication and potency, one must dive into the history books to study the wonderful words of times past!
When people today imagine how someone from the 18th century spoke, they tend to imagine a sophisticated and fanciful construction of words, all pieced together masterfully like a work of art. However the reason one would be drawn to this conclusion is actually an example of survivorship bias. Because people today tend to only be familiar with the greatest, most influential, and most classic pieces of literature and writings from the 18th century, we tend to come to the conclusion that everyone around that time must have spoken in a similar way to the writings of the American Declaration of Independence or Gulliver’s Travels. But if you were willing to sit down and take the time to study the letters and notes from common folk around this time (or words recorded by observers who are, themselves, literate), you’d find a similar frequency of slang and jargon just like we use today!
In this video, I explore what the environment of slang, idioms, and jargon looked like in 18th century England, used by the most wretched and cretinous members of society! And maybe, with a bit of societal effort, we can bring some of these phrases back into the spotlight today!
Sources:
Grose, Francis. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. Printed for S. Hooper, 1785.
McCarthy, Erin. The Curious Compendium of Wonderful Words. Weldon Owen, 2021.
Richardson, A. E., and Harold Donaldson Eberlein. The English Inn, Past and Present: A Review of Its History and Social Life. B. Blom, 1968.