Word: argot
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...first tune to see for themselves just how representative this remarkably diverse group of U.S. Representatives really is. With few exceptions, they seemed less a group of politicians or lawyers (which all are) than a particularly well-cut cross-section of ordinary Americans, exposing the accents, the attitudes, the argot of the regions from which they come, and the universal Chaucerian splay of individual character...
...themselves apart from the "straight" world that incarcerated them, prisoners have developed an argot that few outside of jail could hope to understand. Thus, for new volunteers who work with prisoners, the New York State Department of Correctional Services recently compiled a pamphlet that included half a dozen pages of current "inmate jargon." A sampling of some of the more colorful terms...
...Night (the title is film maker's argot for photographing scenes in daylight to make them look like night) recounts the frustrations, compensations and intramural emotional crises of a crew on location in Nice to shoot a movie called Meet Pamela. "Shooting a film is like taking a stagecoach ride in the Old West," says the director (deftly played by Truffaut himself). "First you hope to have a nice trip. Then you just hope to reach your destination...
Though Laurin has been known to chew out fellow French-Canadian Ron Turcotte in salty Gallic argot, he insists that "I never give my rider instructions. If I didn't think he was the best in the business, I wouldn't be riding him." Turcotte 31, has all the credentials. One of 14 children, he added muscle to his diminutive frame (5 ft. 1 in.) by cutting wood with his lumberjack father in Grand Falls, New Brunswick...
CARNIES (or carnival workers) like to keep their distance from marks (customers, suckers and other non-carnies). One way of remaining aloof is to use an argot that is baffling to outsiders. A sampling of carnie terms...