2006年NPR美国国家公共电台十月-American Slang, Adapted and Updated

From NPR news, this is All Things Considered, I'm Robert Siegel.

I'm Melissa Block and I'm gonna try to keep this next intro short so we can hit the post, fit in the web back, and avoid busting¹ the segment. And you may not be able to decipher that radio slang but there's a guy who makes it his mission to do just that, not just radio slang but also sports slang, hip-hop slang, war slang, and real estate slang. His name is Paul Dickson and he's the author of many books on American English, among them his dictionary of slang, which is now out in its third updated edition. Paul Dickson collect slang like others collect baseball cards or vintage cookie jars with extreme passion.

It's a wonderful hobby, because you don't, you don't do any trespass². It's unlike you're collecting birds' eggs or, or you know, I mean it's, it's there, it's there for the taking, and that, and the fun of it is just sort of decoding³ what other people are saying.

So if you meet somebody from, from a subculture, you'll be asking them, you know, give me your lingo⁴. What, what have you got?

Well, it's hard to do that. I, I remember one time I asked somebody from a newspaper about the lingo and the jargon⁵ and the slang in the newspaper and, and they said, absolutely not, there's no such thing. And the woman I've said that to about two hours later called back and said "You know I was just in the sitting room, we, and we were having lunch and we, when I told them what I said to you and then all of a sudden that the terms kept flying out of their mouths, I mean, calling a newspaper article a piece, I got a piece due this morning, or led, L E D for the lead to a story, and, and et cetera, et cetera. There's hundreds of them, but the the... at the first blush most people don't realize they are using slang. And so I'm looking, I'm talking into a mic sock which is to prevent me from using plosives.

Right now, at this moment? (Yes) Did we call that mic socks too? Popper stopper
Popper stopper
Popper stopper, add that to your next edition
I am writing. The pen is out
write it down..
I will, I will. Popper stopper, I love that.

I was looking in your chapter. You've organized these terms by topic or by subgroup, and I was looking in your section on auction⁶ terms and they're a whole new sub-category now because they're eBay.

Ebayzian, some people call it. The new online auction has some wonderful terms, one of which, one of my favorites is "pinks" and on, in eBay, if you are in a discussion group on eBay or there's some, something going on, eBay employees will occasionally chime in and they'll see something going on they like or don't like and they are called "pinks" because the little dialogue box is, is pink, but what makes it a beautiful piece of slang is it's reminiscent of Pinkerton, you know, the old, the old private detective.

I like in the same section on the, on eBay words reflectoporn.

Heehee…

You, people are gonna go to their computers. That, there're people out there and, and nobody knows who or why they do this but apparently⁷ they will take a picture of a vase or something that's on eBay, that's reflectible, or hubcap or something and they will, they will do it without any clothes on and, and I guess the reason is, more than just naked is because most of these things distort them like fun house mirrors.

So some naked image reflected in something shiny?

Yes.

And there's a word for it?

Reflectoporn. Heehee…

And some of them are part... reasons like this; some of them are not the most attractive people in the world.

Naturally, err⁸, the, the volatility⁹ of slang must, must keep on your toes when you're revising your book like you're, you are throwing some words out, right?

Oh yeah, I am throwing categories out. I mean, I, I re, this is the third time out with this book and it'd been about ten years apart. And whole new categories come in that weren't there before, I mean, there're things like hip-hop and Java speak, which is sort of starbucksy and that all business, but one I love is, is the language at the modern office, which is called the "cube farm". So, er..

It's a cubespeak.

Cubespeak, cubespeak, and, and there are several number of terms that cope with Cubespeak. But one of my, I guess my favorite cubespeak is prairiedogging, which is when there's a, a huge noise somewhere in the building or somebody yells at somebody, all these people pop up and down from their cubes and, and they look like…

Yeah, over there...

Prairie dogs in the prairie popping up and down...

Well, what would be a category that you've gotten rid of completely?

I got rid of the counter-culture, the 50s to 60s, the early drug culture. It's now become so much part of the language that it's now standard language. So a bomber¹⁰ or a trip, that counter-culture of do, do your own thing, all that stuff is now become standard English, even hip-hop there's 70 hip-hop terms are now in the Oxford¹¹ English Dictionary.

One of the words in your section on hip-hop speak is the word "grillz"

Yes.

And we have a song here and this is song grillz by the Rapper Nelly. Let's take a little listen.

I got like platinum¹² and white gold, traditional gold
I'm changin' grillz everyday, like Jay change clothes,
I might be grilled¹³ out nicely (oh) In my white tee (oh),
on South Beach (oh) in my wife beat
V V and studded you can tell when they cut it
Ya see my grandmama hate it, but my lil' mama love it
cuz when I...
--------------------------------------------
at first blush
prep.乍一看,事先无准备地
counterculture
反传统［主流］文化（60和70年代在美国青少年中盛行的一种思潮）

1 busting   

打破，打碎( bust的现在分词 )； 突击搜查（或搜捕）； （使）降级，降低军阶

参考例句：

• Jim and his wife were busting up again yesterday. 吉姆和他的妻子昨天又吵架了。
• He figured she was busting his chops, but it was all true. 他以为她在捉弄他，其实完全是真的。

2 trespass   

n./v.侵犯，闯入私人领地

参考例句：

• The fishing boat was seized for its trespass into restricted waters.渔船因非法侵入受限制水域而被扣押。
• The court sentenced him to a fine for trespass.法庭以侵害罪对他判以罚款。

3 decoding   

n.译码，解码v.译（码），解（码）( decode的现在分词 )；分析及译解电子信号

参考例句：

• We cannot add any other memory to this system without further decoding. 如果不增加译码，就不能使系统的存贮容量有任何扩展。 来自辞典例句
• Examples using the 8250 will be presented in hardware section to clarify full-decoding schemes. 在硬件一节中有应用说明全译码方案8250的例子。 来自辞典例句

4 lingo   

n.语言不知所云，外国话，隐语

参考例句：

• If you live abroad it helps to know the local lingo.住在国外，学一点当地的语言自有好处。
• Don't use all that technical lingo try and explain in plain English.别尽用那种专门术语，用普通的词语解释吧。

5 jargon   

n.术语，行话

参考例句：

• They will not hear critics with their horrible jargon.他们不愿意听到评论家们那些可怕的行话。
• It is important not to be overawed by the mathematical jargon.要紧的是不要被数学的术语所吓倒.

6 auction   

n.拍卖；拍卖会；vt.拍卖

参考例句：

• They've put the contents of their house up for auction.他们把房子里的东西全都拿去拍卖了。
• They bought a new minibus with the proceeds from the auction.他们用拍卖得来的钱买了一辆新面包车。

7 apparently   

adv.显然地；表面上，似乎

参考例句：

• An apparently blind alley leads suddenly into an open space.山穷水尽，豁然开朗。
• He was apparently much surprised at the news.他对那个消息显然感到十分惊异。

8 err   

vi.犯错误，出差错

参考例句：

• He did not err by a hair's breadth in his calculation.他的计算结果一丝不差。
• The arrows err not from their aim.箭无虚发。

9 volatility   

n.挥发性，挥发度，轻快，（性格）反复无常

参考例句：

• That was one reason why volatility was so low last year.这也是去年波动性如此低的原因之一。
• Yet because volatility remained low for so long,disaster myopia prevailed.然而，由于相当长的时间里波动性小，灾难短视就获胜了。

10 bomber   

n.轰炸机，投弹手，投掷炸弹者

参考例句：

• He flew a bomber during the war.他在战时驾驶轰炸机。
• Detectives hunting the London bombers will be keen to interview him.追查伦敦爆炸案凶犯的侦探们急于对他进行讯问。

11 Oxford   

n.牛津（英国城市）

参考例句：

• At present he has become a Professor of Chemistry at Oxford.他现在已是牛津大学的化学教授了。
• This is where the road to Oxford joins the road to London.这是去牛津的路与去伦敦的路的汇合处。

12 platinum   

n.白金

参考例句：

• I'll give her a platinum ring.我打算送给她一枚白金戒指。
• Platinum exceeds gold in value.白金的价值高于黄金。

13 grilled   

adj. 烤的, 炙过的, 有格子的 动词grill的过去式和过去分词形式

参考例句：

• He was grilled for two hours before the police let him go. 他被严厉盘查了两个小时后，警察才放他走。
• He was grilled until he confessed. 他被严加拷问，直到他承认为止。