Oleksa Horbach's 1951 study of argots analyzed sources (argots of professionals, thugs, prisoners, homeless, school children, etc.) with special attention to an etymological analysis of argots, ways of word formation and borrowing depending on the source-language (Church Slavonic, Russian, Czech, Polish, Romani, Greek, Romanian, Hungarian, German).
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In Russian linguistics, jargon is classified as an expressive form of language, while secret languages are referred to as argots.
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The Parlyaree spoken on fairgrounds tends to borrow much more from Romany, as well as other languages and argots spoken by other travelling groups, such as cant and backslang.
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Such systems are examples of argots à clef, or "coded argots." Specific words can go from argot into common speech or the other way. For example, modern French loufoque 'crazy, goofy', now common usage, originates in the louchébem transformation of Fr. fou 'crazy'. In the field of medicine, physicians have been said to have their own spoken argot, cant or slang, which incorporates commonly understood abbreviations and acronyms, frequently used technical colloquialisms, and much everyday professional slang (that may or may not be institutionally or geographically localized).
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In addition, there were also several non-Romani peripatetic groups in Bohemia, who spoke Czech or German or argots based on these languages. The self-ethnonym of Bohemian Romanies was simply Rom (plural Roma). They were called "Hungarians" by the Sinti; this probably reflects their origin in Slovakia, which was then part of Hungary.
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However, with the dissolution of the academy in 1879 the project was left unfinished. This work, which included studies completed by experts concerning professional argots and research on localisms in Argentina's interior, was almost completely lost. Only a dozen of the vocabulary words were preserved, having been published in the academy's periodical, El Plata Literario. The same periodical announced in 1876 a Collection of American Voices, the work of Carlos Manuel de Trelles, which included contributions from some 300 people.
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A slang dictionary is a reference book containing an alphabetical list of slang, which is vernacular vocabulary not generally acceptable in formal usage, usually including information given for each word, including meaning, pronunciation, and etymology. It can provide definitions on a range of slang from more mundane terms (like "rain check" or "bob and weave") to obscure sexual practices. Such works also can include words and phrases arising from different dialects and argots, which may or may not have passed into more common usage. They can also track the changing meaning of the terms over time and space, as they migrate and mutate.
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700 Under the strictest definition, an argot is a proper language with its own grammatical system. But such complete secret languages are rare because the speakers usually have some public language in common, on which the argot is largely based. Such argots are lexically divergent forms of a particular language, with a part of its vocabulary replaced by words unknown to the larger public; argot used in this sense is synonymous with cant. For example, argot in this sense is used for systems such as verlan and louchébem, which retain French syntax and apply transformations only to individual words (and often only to a certain subset of words, such as nouns, or semantic content words).
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Poet Lemn Sissay observed that "Cab Calloway was taking ownership of language for a people who, just a few generations before, had their own languages taken away." H. L. Mencken in The American Language however defined jive as "an amalgam of Negro-slang from Harlem and the argots of drug addicts and the pettier sort of criminals, with occasional additions from the Broadway gossip columns and the high school campus". Dan Burley's book Original Handbook of Harlem Jive was compiled and published in 1944 at the suggestion of Harlem poet Langston Hughes. In 1953, Albert Lavada Durst published the Jives of Dr. Hep Cat, a collection of rhymes compiled when he was at WVET in Austin, where he did late night R&B.
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The almost identical Parlyaree has been spoken in fairgrounds since at least the 17th centuryPartridge, Eric (1937) Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English and continues to be used by show travellers in England and Scotland. As theatrical booths, circus acts, and menageries were once a common part of European fairs, it is likely that the roots of Polari/Parlyaree lie in the period before both theatre and circus became independent of the fairgrounds. The Parlyaree spoken on fairgrounds tends to borrow much more from Romany, as well as other languages and argots spoken by travelling people, such as cant and backslang. Henry Mayhew gave a verbatim account of Polari as part of an interview with a Punch and Judy showman in the 1850s.
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During the Victorian era, criminals and gangs started to form organizations which would be collectively become London's criminal underworld. Criminal societies in the underworld started to develop their own ranks and groups which were sometimes called families, and were often made up of lower-classes and operated on pick-pocketry, prostitution, forgery and counterfeiting, commercial burglary and even money- laundering schemes. Unique also were the use of slang and argots used by Victorian criminal societies to distinguish each other. One of the most infamous crime bosses in the Victorian underworld was Adam Worth, who was nicknamed "the Napoleon of the criminal world" or "the Napoleon of Crime" and became the inspiration behind the popular character of Professor Moriarty.Macintyre, Ben (1997).
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" Lawrence Joseph instructs Fulton's reader to "expect a vision of American society — its technological, sexual, class, and religious relationships and context — embodied in language conscientiously intelligent and physical." Commenting on how Fulton's treatment of the "real world is never treated only as an exercise in 'realism'" British poet Rodney Pybus notes the "blessedly unpredictable and unconventional" nature of her use of "psychic and social turmoil." David Barber argues that Fulton's "expansiveness" of subject is realized in "poems that binge not just on language but on lexicons and argots, poems that lift their riffs not only from the deep wells of the American vernacular but from the streamlined vaults of newfangled technology and scientific determinism." Powers of Congress contains many examples of her signature use of polyphony and word superclusters which Fulton has described in interviews and in a 1990 essay on her own poetics, "To Organize A Waterfall.
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A number of Șăineanu's texts focused on the language patterns covered by "argot" and the original meaning of "jargon", in relation to French and Parisian social history, discussing the language of the gueux (marginalized and destitute migrants), the obscene nature of some medieval performances, the linguistic codes used by brigands during the Hundred Years' War, and the impact of argot in the work of poet François Villon or other French Renaissance writers.R. Anthony Lodge, A Sociolinguistic History of Parisian French, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2004, p.111, 238, 240-243. discussed in part the emergence of what Șăineanu himself defined as ("the lowly Parisian language"), a mix of argots emerging from 19th century urbanization.H. G. Lay, "Réflecs d'un gniaff: On Emile Pouget and Le Père Peinard", in Dean De la Motte, Jeannene M. Przyblyski (eds.), Making the News: Modernity & the Mass Press in Nineteenth-century France, University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst, 1999, p.129.
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