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Vocabulary of an informal register

A slang is a vocabulary (words, phrases, and linguistic usages) of an informal register, common in verbal conversation but avoided in formal writing. It also sometimes refers to the language generally exclusive to the members of particular in groups in order to establish group identity, exclude outsiders, or both. The word itself came about in the 18th century and has been defined in multiple ways since its conception.

In its earliest attested use (1756), the word slang referred to the vocabulary of "low" or "disreputable" people. By the early nineteenth century, it was no longer exclusively associated with disreputable people, but continued to be applied to usages below the level of standard educated speech. In Scots dialect it meant "talk, chat, gossip", as used by Aberdeen poet William Scott in 1832: "The slang gaed on aboot their war'ly care." In northern English dialect it meant "impertinence, abusive language". The origin of the word "slang" is unclear. It was first used in print around 1800 to refer to the language of the disreputable and criminal classes in London, though its usage likely dates back further. A Scandinavian origin has been proposed (compare, for example, Norwegian slengenavn, which means "nickname"), but based on "date and early associations" is discounted by the Oxford English Dictionary.

Linguists have no simple and clear definition of slang but agree that it is a constantly changing linguistic phenomenon present in every subculture worldwide. Some argue that slang exists because we must come up with ways to define new experiences that have surfaced with time and modernity. Attempting to remedy the lack of a clear definition, however, Bethany K. Dumas and Jonathan Lighter argue that an expression should be considered "true slang" if it meets at least two of the following criteria: Slang dictionaries, collecting thousands of slang entries, offer a broad, empirical window into the motivating forces behind slang. While many forms of lexicon may be considered low register or "sub standard", slang remains distinct from colloquial and jargon terms because of its specific social contexts. While viewed as inappropriate in formal usage, colloquial terms are typically considered acceptable in speech across a wide range of contexts, whereas slang tends to be perceived as inappropriate in many common communication situations. Jargon refers to language used by personnel in a particular field or to language used to represent specific terms within a field to those with a particular interest. Although jargon and slang can both be used to exclude non group members from the conversation, slang tends to emphasize social and contextual understanding whereas the main purpose of jargon is to optimize communication using terms that imply technical understanding. While colloquialisms and jargon may seem like slang because they reference a particular group, they do not necessarily fit the same definition because they do not represent a particular effort to replace the general lexicon of a standard language. Colloquialisms are considered more acceptable and more expected in standard usage than slang is, and jargon is often created to talk about aspects of a particular field that are not accounted for in the general lexicon. However, this differentiation is not consistently applied by linguists; the terms "slang" and "jargon" are sometimes treated as synonymous, and the scope of "jargon" is at times extended to mean all forms of socially restricted language. It is often difficult to differentiate slang from colloquialisms and even high register lexicon because slang generally becomes accepted into common vocabulary over time. Words such as "spurious" and "strenuous" were once perceived as slang, but they are now considered general, even high register words. Some literature on slang even says that mainstream acceptance of a slang term removes its status as true slang because it is then accepted by the media and is thus no longer the special insider speech of a particular group. For example, Black American music frequently uses slang, and many of its frequently used terms have therefore become part of vernacular English. Some say that a general test for whether a word is slang or not is whether or not it would be acceptable in an academic or legal setting, but that would consider slang to be the same as normal, everyday, informal language. Others say that a general test is whether the word has been entered in the Oxford English Dictionary, which some scholars claim changes its status as slang. Still, while a great deal of slang takes off, even becoming accepted into the standard lexicon, much slang dies out, sometimes only referencing a group. An example of this is the term "groovy" which is a relic of 1960s and 70s American hippie slang. Nevertheless, for a slang term to become a slang term, people must use it, at some point in time, as a way to flout standard language. in the book "Warbirds: Diary of an Unknown Aviator". Since this time "lit" has gained popularity through Rap songs such as ASAP Rocky's "Get Lit" in 2011. As the popularity of the word has increased so too has the number of different meanings associated with the word. Now "lit" describes a person who is drunk and/or high, as well as an event that is especially awesome and "hype". Words and phrases from popular Hollywood films and television series frequently become slang.

One early slang like code, Thieves' cant, was first used in England in around the year 1600 as a way of law breakers to communicate without the authorities knowing of what they were saying.

Slang is usually associated with a particular social group and plays a role in constructing identity. While slang outlines social space, attitudes about slang partly construct group identity and identify individuals as members of groups. Therefore, using the slang of a particular group associates an individual with that group. Michael Silverstein's orders of indexicality can be employed to assign a slang term as a second order index to that particular group. Using a slang term, however, can also give an individual the qualities associated with the term's group of origin, whether or not the individual is trying to identify as a member of the group. This allocation of qualities based on abstract group association is known as third order indexicality. As outlined in Elisa Mattiello's book "An Introduction to English Slang", a slang term can assume several levels of meaning and can be used for many reasons connected with identity. For example, male adolescents use the terms "foxy" and "shagadelic" to "show their belonging to a band, to stress their virility or their age, to reinforce connection with their peer group and to exclude outsiders, to show off, etc." These two examples use both traditional and nontraditional methods of word formation to create words with more meaning and expressiveness than the more direct and traditional words "sexy" and "beautiful":
The slang term "foxy" is arguably not even a case of word formation since this process, (denominal adjective with y suffix from "fox") already occurred in the formation of this word with its standard English meanings of "foxlike, crafty, cunning". Instead, the traditional word's meaning is extended to "attractive, desirable, pretty, sexy" with the following added implications according to Mattiello:
From the semantic point of view, slangy foxy is more loaded than neutral sexy in terms of information provided. That is, for young people foxy means having the quality of: (1) attracting interest, attention, affection, (2) causing desire, (3) excellent or admirable in appearance, and (4) sexually provocative, exciting, etc., whereas sexy only refers to the quality indicated in point (4). "shagadelic" is a combination of a slang term with a slang suffix and therefore is considered an "extra grammatical" creation. Matiello stresses that those agents who identify themselves as "young men" have "genuinely coined" these terms and choose to use them over "canonical" terms —like beautiful or sexy—because of the indexicalized social identifications the former convey.

In terms of first and second order indexicality, the usage of speaker oriented terms by male adolescents indicated their membership to their age group, to reinforce connection to their peer group, and to exclude outsiders. Other types of slang include SMS language used on mobile phones, and "chatspeak", (e. g., "LOL", an acronym meaning "laughing out loud" or "laugh out loud" or ROFL, "rolling on the floor laughing"), which are widely used in instant messaging on the internet. As subcultures are often forms of counterculture, which is understood to oppose the norm, it follows that slang has come to be associated with counterculture.

Slang is often adopted from social media as a sign of social awareness and shared knowledge of popular culture. This type known as internet slang has become prevalent since the early 2000s along with the rise in popularity of social networking services, including Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. This has spawned new vocabularies associated with each new social media venue, such as the use of the term "friending" on Facebook, which is a verbification of "friend" used to describe the process of adding a new person to one's group of friends on the website, despite the existence of an analogous term "befriend". This term is much older than Facebook, but has only recently entered the popular lexicon. Other examples of slang in social media demonstrate a proclivity toward shortened words or acronyms. These are especially associated with services such as Twitter, which has a 280 character limit for each message and therefore requires a relatively brief mode of expression. This includes the use of hashtags which explicitly state the main content of a message or image, such as #food or #photography.

Some critics believe that when slang becomes more commonplace it effectively eradicates the "proper" use of a certain language. However, academic (descriptive) linguists believe that language is not static but ever changing and that slang terms are valid words within a language's lexicon. While prescriptivists study and promote the socially preferable or "correct" ways to speak, according to a language's normative grammar and syntactical words, descriptivists focus on studying language to further understand the subconscious rules of how individuals speak, which makes slang important in understanding such rules. Noam Chomsky, a founder of anthropological linguistic thought, challenged structural and prescriptive grammar and began to study sounds and morphemes functionally, as well as their changes within a language over time.

The 1941 film, Ball of Fire, portrays a professor played by Gary Cooper who is researching and writing an encyclopedia article about slang. The 2006 film, Idiocracy, portrays a less intelligent society in the year 2505 that has people who use all various sorts of aggressive slang. These slangs sound very foreign and alienating to the protagonist of the movie, a US Army librarian.