In American English, some slang words come and go. And some stay and stay. Or as Walt Whitman poetically observed in his 1885 defense of American slang, complete with creative spelling: "Slang ... is ...

When Tony Thorne first started researching slang, he was largely on his own. This was in the ’80s, when, according to Thorne, the academic community “virtually ignored” slang as a part of linguistics.

Every generation has its own way of speaking, but some slang words just don’t stand the test of time. Once popular phrases that were part of everyday conversation are now barely hanging on, used only ...

What's a "blurker"? Or a "pavement princess"? Or a "plokta"? What does "peeps" mean? Writer Paul Dickson knows. A confessed addict to collecting and identifying slang words, Dickson has written a new ...

The American slang can be quite difficult and confusing. In case you aren't familiar with the cultural context of the tricky terms used in these slangs, you won't be able to decipher the meaning. For ...

From West Virginia to the Bay Area, Jennifer Garner, Keegan-Michael Key, Olivia Munn, Matthew McConaughey, Adam Devine, E-40, Jon Hamm, Chloë Grace Moretz, Tiffany Haddish, Jason Bateman, Jennifer ...

Has American English become homogenized? Have our regional ways of saying particular things — sometimes in very particular ways — receded into the past? Or do we talk as funny as ever? But what about ...