Speakers of English everywhere seem to have become more liberal, admitting more and more slang into their unselfconscious everyday speech; gobsmacked , O.T.T ., wimp and sorted can now be heard among the respectable British middle-aged; terms such as horny and bullshit which were not so long ago considered vulgar in the extreme are now heard regularly on radio and television, while former taboo terms, notably the ubiquitous British shag , occur even in the conversation of young ladies. In Oakland, California, the liberalising process reached new extremes late in 1996 with the promotion of so-called Ebonics : black street speech given equal status with the language of the dominant white culture.
Youthspeak
The greatest number of new terms appearing in the new edition of the dictionary are used by adolescents and children, the group in society most given to celebrating heightened sensations, new experiences and to renaming the features of their world, as well as mocking anyone less interesting or younger or older than themselves. But the rigid generation gap which used to operate in the family and school has to some extent disappeared. Children still distance themselves from their parents and other authority figures by their use of a secret code, but the boomers - the baby boom generation - grew up identifying themselves with subversion and liberalism and, now that they are parents in their turn, many of them are unwilling either to disapprove of or to give up the use of slang, picking up their children's words (often much to the latters' embarrassment) and evolving their own family-based language ( helicopters, velcroids, howlers, chap-esses are examples).
The main obsessions among slang users of all ages, as revealed by word counts, have not changed; intoxication by drink or drugs throws up (no pun intended) the largest number of synonyms; lashed, langered, mullered and hooted are recent additions to this part of the lexicon. These are followed by words related to sex and romance - copping off, out trouting, on the sniff and jam, lam, slam and the rest - and the many vogue terms of approval that go in and out of fashion among the young (in Britain ace, brill, wicked and phat have given way to top, mint, fit and dope which are themselves on the way out at the time of writing). The number of nicknames for money, bollers, boyz, beer-tokens, squirt and spon among them, has predictably increased since the materialist 1980s and adolescent concern with identity-building and status-confirming continues to produce a host of dismissive epithets for the unfortunate misfit, some of which, like wendy, spod, licker, are confined to the school environment while others, such as trainspotter, anorak and geek , have crossed over into generalised usage.
Other obsessions are more curious; is it the North American housewife's hygiene fetish which has given us more than a dozen terms (dust-bunny, dust-kitty, ghost-turd, etc.) for the balls of fluff found on an unswept floor, where British English has only one (beggars velvet )? Why do speakers in post-industrial Britain and Australia still need a dozen or more words to denote the flakes of dung that hang from the rear of sheep and other mammals, words like dags, dangleberries, dingleberries, jub-nuts, winnets and wittens ? Teenagers have their fixations, finding wigs (toop, syrup, Irish, rug) and haemorrhoids (farmers, Emma Freuds, nauticals) particularly hilarious. A final curiosity is the appearance in teenage speech fashionable vogue terms which are actually much older than their users realise: once again referring to money, British youth has come up with luka ( the humorous pejorative "filthy lucre" in a new guise), Americans with duckets (formerly "ducats", the Venetian gold coins used all over Renaissance Europe).
There are some examples of nowadays' slang which I found from very interesting site:
A: An A tuning fork. Example: Man, my guitar's way out of tune. Can you pass me my A?
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a (good) kay and a half: One and a half kilometres; the distance to anywhere from anywhere else; a long way. Example: Where's Christie's Beach? About a kay and a half that way. How far are we from home? We'd be a good kay and a half, I reckon.
A Buck One-Eighty: You have A Buck Three-Eighty. I have always heard it this way--so there's a variant. Example: Wonder if a buck three-eighty is actually the same amount as a buck one-eighty?
a buck three eighty: The price for anything. Example: Q: How much is this, sir? A: That's a buck three eighty.
a case of the ass or redass: Highly annoyed, pissed off. Currently used in US Army. Example: Sergeant Greenfield has this huge case of the ass with me ever since I wrecked his humvee.
a couple two three: I guess this means two or three. (We don't say this in Chicago. It's a weird thing they say out west or something.) Example: He had a couple two three dogs in his yard.
a dollar three eightyfive: A nonsensical price for when one does not want to give the real price. Example: How much did my Lexus cost? A dollar three eightyfive.
a double: A twenty dollar bill. Example: I've got eighty dollars on me, all I need is a double to make it a hundred. [A double sawbuck is a twenty. Read Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler to see fin, sawbuck, and double sawbuck in action.]
a fin: Five dollars. (Gamblers use it for $500.) Example: All I have is a fin and two dollars in change in my pocket.
a freddy: a pint of beer, more specifically a pint of heineken, named after the late freddy heineken Example: Two freddys and a ginger ale, please.
a happy Birthday: A phrase mostly used by guys when they catch themselves in a situation when a girl exposes some part of her anatomy without knowing it, clothed or not. Usually happens at the gym. Example: Did you see that girl's shirt? Now that is a happy birthday.
A List: The people at school who are cooler than anyone else in the school. Example: I'm not cool enough to go out with her--she's A list.
a Monet: Someone who is very good looking from a distance, yet from up close the attraction diminishes. Example: He was hot from afar, but he turned out to be a Monet when I went up to speak.
a mouse in his pocket: Phrase used to describe someone large, probably very strong, but intensely stupid. From _Of Mice and Men_[?] Example: We've got a new guy at work who worries me; I swear I think he's got a mouse in his pocket.
a nifty: A fifty dollar bill. Example: I borrowed a nifty from my mom and she upped it five bucks more.Now I owe her fifty-five dollars.
a pig in your pocket: Used when a person doesn't want to assist another. Example: What do you mean we? Is there a pig in your pocket?
a sims moment: Brief moment in which you can relate something in real life to something in the computer simulation game The Sims. Usually occurs after rounds of playing said game. Example: I'm having a sims moment. This kitchen looks almost like what I did in The Sims last night.
a sleeve: A hundred dollar bill. Example: I got seven hundred dollars, all in sleeves.
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