Word: argot
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...fighting man's argot changes with the generations and the geography, the weapons and the war. Hearing the lingo of South Viet Nam, the dogfaces, gyrenes and swabbies of World War II would hardly know Dodge City from the Boonies. A G.I. glossary, updated...
...alertness to the world around him. Says he: "I have to have the largest possible working frame of reference. I have to know about jazz, Viet Nam, what's going on in Washington, the experimentation and adventures in tonality. If Baldwin or LeRoi Jones uses Harlem argot, I've got to know what it means." His familiarity with music and dance enables him to discuss a musical from book through choreography and score with unusual expertise. "Music is my religion," he explains. "Where others might go to church when they are on the brink. I just lock myself...
...Murphy game" is underworld argot for a slick maneuver in which a victim puts his cash in an envelope and gives it to the con man, who makes a fast sleight-of-hand switch and hands back an identical envelope stuffed with newspaper strips. It was named after an Irishman who was arrested many times for perpetrating such tricks...
...Susan Sontag and the derivation of the word Camp [Dec. 17], how the reference to the Aussie term "low saloon" was dug up is beyond me. Camp may be purely New York slang, argot. I first ran across it in the early '30s. At that time, groups of homosexuals lived together in apartments they rented en masse. The apartments were called "camps," and by extension the residents thereof were also called camps-I don't know why not campers, but they weren't. "He's a camp," was not an uncommon phrase...
Alfie! by Bill Naughton. A bird is a girl in cockney argot, and Alfie is strictly out for the birds. In this unpretentious and consistently pleasant comedy, Alfie counts the workaday world well lost for lust. He is the modern, international antihero, the man who wants to be kind to everyone and responsible...