SLANG
England.[1] Admiral Dewey, for instance, is admired as a "scrapper," or, as we should phrase it, a fighting Admiral. Mr. Henry Fuller, of Chicago, in his powerful novel, The Cave Dwellers, uses a still less elegant synonym for "scrap"—he talks of a "connubial spat." In the same book I note the phrases: "He teetered back and forth on his toes," "He was a stocky young man," "One of his brief noonings," "That's right, Claudia—score the profession." "Score," as used in America, does not mean "score off," but rather, I take it, "attack and leave your mark upon." It is very common in this sense. For instance, I note among the headlines of a New York paper, "Mr. So-and-so scores Yellow Journalism." Talking of Yellow Journalism, by the way, the expressions "a beat" and "a scoop" for what we in England call an "exclusive" item of news, were unknown to me until I went to America. I was a little bewildered, too, when I was told of a family which "lived on air-tights." Their diet consisted of canned (or, as we should say, tinned) provisions.
The most popular slang expression of the day is "to rubberneck," or, more concisely, "to rubber." Its primary meaning is to crane the neck in curiosity, to pry round the corner, as it were.[2] But it has
- ↑ Mr. Walkley reports that he has heard a Cockney policeman, speaking of a street row, say, "There's been a little scrappin'."
- ↑ "About a dozen ringers followed us into the church and stood around rubberin'." "Gettin' next to the new kinds o' saddles and rubber-neckin' to read the names on the tyres."—Artie. A writer in the New York Sun says: "I first heard the term 'rubber-
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