The History of Slang

The Criminal Cant

Slang was the main reason for the development of prescriptive language in an attempt to slow down the rate of change in both spoken and written language. Latin and French were the only two languages that maintained the use of prescriptive language in the 14th century. It was not until the early 15th century that scholars began pushing for a standard English language.

During the Middle Ages, certain writers such as Chaucer, William Caxton, and William of Malmesbury represented the regional differences in pronunciations and dialects.  The different dialects and the different pronunciations represented the first meaning for the term “slang.”

However, our present-day meaning for slang did not begin forming until the 16th or 17th century. The English Criminal Cant developed in the 16th century. The English Criminal Cant was a new kind of speech used by criminals and cheats, meaning it developed mostly in saloons and gambling houses. The English Criminal Cant was at first believed to be foreign, meaning scholars thought that it had either originated in Romania or had a relationship to French. The English Criminal Cant was slow developing. In fact, out of the four million people who spoke English, only about ten thousand spoke the English Criminal Cant. By the end of the 16th century this new style of speaking was considered to be a language “without reason or order” (Thorne 23). During the 18th century schoolmasters taught pupils to believe that the English Criminal Cant (which by this time had developed into slang) was not the correct usage of English and slang was considered to be taboo.

Translation Criminal Cant:

cawbe - cocaine

onick - heroin

wid- talk

shades - prison guards

grade - money

fein - man 

Slang was beginning to be presented in popular plays. The first appearance of the slang was in a play by Richard Brome’s and later appeared in poems and songs by Copland. By the 1700’s the cultural differences in America had begun to influence the English-speaking population, and slang began to expand.