7 Lost American Slang Words

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 the wholesome fermentation or eructation of those processes eternally active in language, by which froth and specks are thrown up, mostly to pass away; though occasionally to settle and permanently chrystallize".

What gives a slang word stickability?

"I have no idea what makes a slang word stick," says Tom Dalzell, author of a slew of books on slang, including Vietnam War Slang and Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang. "Connie Eble from the University of North Carolina has our best corpus of American college slang, and she estimates that only about 10 percent of the slang terms used survive a year."

Dalzell jaws, "What makes 'cool' last for 68 years without fading? What is it about 'hip' that let it morph into hep, hipcat, hepcat, hipster, hippie (jazz sense), hippie (flower child), hip-hop, and hipster — new hipster? Why did groovy go from very popular in 1945 to dead to back to life in 1965? There is no predicting whether a new word will stick. None at all."

From the trash bin of popular culture, here are seven long-lost slang words from America's past:

1) Moll buzzer, 1870s. A criminal, especially a pickpocket or a pickpocket's accomplice, who preys on women. Example: Habitual criminal Molly Holbrook "has taken as her companion one Jim Hoya who is known to the police detectives as a 'moll buzzer,' a man who follows a female pickpocket about, and receives from her the 'leathers' taken from a woman in public gatherings." From the Chicago Daily Tribuneon Jul 26, 1874.

More