Gibberish

“ Gipsey, SLANG, the secret language of the Gipseys, synonymous with GIBBERISH, another Gipsey word. This word is only to be found in the Dictionaries of Webster and Ogilvie. It was, perhaps, first recorded by Grose, in his Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, 1785. Slang, since it has been adopted as an English word, generally implies vulgar language not known or recognised as CANT; and latterly, when applied to speech, has superseded the word FLASH.
SLANG, counterfeit or short weights and measures. A SLANG quart is a pint and a half. Slang measures are lent out at 2d. per day. ”

“ Nothing else in language is more strange, more strong, uglier, or more beautiful. It is the element in language that lives most, lasts longest, and decays quickest. It is vital. It belches words which become miasma. It spews words that fall into the gutter and disappear—cruel, warty, misshapen, monstrous! words that are ashamed in the light—words that are the seed of hideous fungi growing in darkness from decay. Slang also drops words that quiver, palpitate in the light—words that strike hard, that smell of sulphur and trail smoke. ”

“ All the way along there has been a decided blank space between decision in the mind and embodiment in language.
Whether slang, profanity, or colloquialisms have cut into our ordinary speech to such an extent as to keep us at a loss for the apt word, or whether we have grown careless or slovenly in our habits of expression, is a matter with which we are not concerned here. We do know that we are continually hampered by our inability to state absolutely our meaning. ”

“ A profusion of words used in an ephemeral slang sense is evidence, then, that the writer addresses himself merely to the uneducated and thoughtless of his own day; the revival of bygone meanings, on the other hand, and an archaic turn given to language is the mark rather of authors who are ambitious of a hearing from more than one age. The accretions of time bring round a word many reputable meanings, of which the oldest is like to be the deepest in grain. ”

“ Yet strangely enough, the faculty of speech is not congenital. Man is born as dumb as any other animal; but unlike other animals, he is born with the will-power of bringing forth in his brain a faculty that sets him apart from all the beasts of the earth. Still, no language ever came to him spontaneously. Every word was born of a need. His mind kissed his brain and words blossomed from his lips. Nor did the words issue merely as sounds, but they came full-fledged as verbs, nouns, and other parts of speech which make up a language in its infancy. ”

“ We may excuse faulty attire, forgive the social slips of those who have forgotten from their little book on etiquette—in a word, we can overlook almost all shortcomings and errors of conduct save those only of speech. There is something in a man’s words that marks him with the mark of Cain or puts the halo around his brow. Yet, what a curious thing is language? Words are the least part of it. Their aptness, inflections, tones, pronunciations, stresses, and combinations—their parallelisms and contrasts—all these are immeasurably greater than the mere words themselves. ”

“ As soon as phonetic corruption shows itself in a language, that language has lost what we considered to be the most essential character of all human speech, namely, that every part of it should have a meaning. ”

“ The example of the deaf and dumb, who evidently think, not by associations of sound, but of touch,—using combinations of finger-speech, instead of words, as the symbols of their thought,—appears to show that he might find a partial substitute for his present means of reflection. ”

“ It was only that they had found words too blundering a vehicle to express emotions so strong and complex. But where the tongue fails, the glance of the eye and the pressure of a hand says in a moment what many words only darken and confuse. ”

“ I desire you to speak, little one. If I can believe in the illusion of flesh and eager eyes, then I can believe in the illusion of sound. Come speak. I am at the mercy of my madness. If you speak to me, little one, I will understand. My stupid senses that retain their earthly logic will be ravished at the sound of your voice. ”

“ We cannot estimate talk nearly as accurately as we estimate writing: so much that belongs to the word spoken is totally lost when it becomes a word recorded: the light in the eye, the brow raised in scorn or anger, the moving lips whose amusement or contempt is a picture before it is a sound, the infinitely varying weight and tone of the human voice: all that is gone or seen only {157} very darkly through the glass of description. ”

“ The irony, the grotesquerie, the tonic earthiness never grow less, but one learns to discount somewhat the effect of the hardness of speech on the recipients of that speech, as through experience one learns—after one's second attendance at a wake—to discount something of the too voluble sorrow of keening. ”

“ THE talk of empty-headed, vain and tiresome babblers, who with no foundation of solid matter let out a stream of tipsy, tottering words, has justly been thought to come from the lips and not from the heart. ”

“ It is perhaps this humour of speaking no more words than we need which has so miserably curtailed some of our words, that in familiar writing and conversation they often lose all but their first syllables, as in mob, red. ”

“ To notice noises, classify them, understand that some of these sounds are words, and that these words are thoughts; to find out of themselves alone the meaning of everything, and distinguish the true from the false, the real from the imaginary; to correct, by observation, the errors of their too ardent imagination; to unravel a chaos, and during this gigantic task to render the tongue supple and strengthen the staggering little legs, in short, to become a man. ”

“ Your tongue clings to the roof of your mouth, your mouth remains open, you suffer a rush of blood to the face, due to your powerful and unsuccessful effort to articulate, and the word refuses to be spoken. ”

“ It is a far more shifting and subtle thing than that, for mere speech is constantly supplemented or corrected or contradicted by the twinkle in our eyes, the tautness or tremor in our voice, the twisting of our lips. ”

“ Verbal ideas were by far the most numerous, ranging in degree from actual speech-movements to what G calls his "verbalizing tendency," in which sometimes a mere upward pressure of the tongue against the roof of the mouth indicates the beginning of a word or letter. In many cases the stimulus-word is simply supplemented to form a new (reaction-) word; e. g., "beauty" is completed by "ful" to stand for "beautiful." No less frequent are alliterations and synonyms, while rhymes and even nonsense-rhymes occur at times. ”

“ The word “parts” becoming a synonym in Smut of the organs of generation had to be used with great care, and these are merely two isolated instances [51] of a principle so strong that when two persons who had been initiated into the third or fourth degree of the secret language began a conversation, practically not a single phrase could be used by them without this double entendre, causing hysterical laughter. ”

“ The tongue that plays the suavest airs upon the most expedient string; that echoes much, but never dares to be the leader in the ring; that always drops a pleasing word because it's easiest so to do; when drums of argument are heard, by silence, sees the matter through. Oh! I dislike the trembling tongue that is afraid of words sincere. I do detest the song that's sung to the accompaniment of fear. ”

“ If blank verse be not tumid and gorgeous, it is crippled prose; and familiar images in laboured language have nothing to recommend them but absurd novelty, which, wanting the attractions of nature, cannot please long. One excellence of the “Splendid Shilling” is, that it is short. Disguise can gratify no longer than it deceives. ”

“ From these examples, the attentive reader must have already remarked that the tumultuous rush of words frequently results from the merest resemblance in sound. Not seldom does the riot of words degenerate into paltry quibbling, into the silliest pun, into the automatic association of words according to their sound, without regard to their meaning. ”

“ When the waves of sound started by your speaking enter their ears and record a disparaging remark on their keyboards, their brains become conscious of the disparagement and resent it accordingly. If you did not disparage them they would not resent it. ”

“ The mouth, in fact, seems to be the feature where you may trace every kind of dissimulation, from the simper of vanity, to the fixed smile of the designing villain. Perhaps, the modulations of the voice will still more quickly give a key to the character than even the turns of the mouth, or the words that issue from it; often do the tones of unpractised dissemblers give the lie to their assertions. ”

“ Another class of interjections are such as any one conversant with the gesture-signs of savages and deaf-mutes would recognize as being themselves gesture signs, made with vocal sound, in short, voice-gestures. The sound m’m, m’n, made with the lips closed, is the obvious expression of the man who tries to speak, but cannot. Even the deaf-and-dumb child, though he cannot hear the sound of his own voice, makes this noise to show that he is dumb, that he is mu mu, as the Vei negroes of West Africa would say. To the speaking man, the sound which we write as mum! ”

“ We do, indeed, see that what strongly affects the emotional nature prompts utterance, as it also prompts gesture: fear, surprise, joy, lead to exclamations; and delight at a new cognition might iind vent in an interjection; but this interjection would express the delight, not the cognition; if language commenced in such a way, the historical beginnings of speech would be names of emotions, not of the qualities of objects. ”

“ At the same time this very imperfection of speech, and the struggle of primitive thought to express itself in language sometimes creates, as it were by accident, the very flower of strength and vividness in picturesque description, and the interpretation of emotion as the most skillful art has been unable to do. ”

“ Even for necessary speech he is taught to substitute a language of signs, as fully systematized as the speech of the deaf and dumb. Should he, while at work, wound his fellow-workman, sorrow may be expressed by striking his breast. ”

“ It enables the speaker, by the change of a single consonant, to make a full and clear discrimination, and relieves the narration from doubts and ambiguity, where doubts and ambiguity would otherwise often exist. ”

“ Otherwise, though he may get a habit of reading more slowly, he will fall into his usual manner in discourse: and this habit of speaking aloud, when alone, will not only bring him to a more distinct utterance, but produce a facility of expression, in which silent thinkers are generally defective.—See the articles Language, Reading, Speech. ”

“ A look or tone often sheds more light upon character or intent than a flood of words could do. Humour, banter, irony, are illustrations of what tone, or style, or perceived incongruity can accomplish in the way of impressing upon words a different meaning from that which they of themselves would wear. That language is impotent to express our feelings, though often, perhaps, pleaded as a form merely, is also a frequent genuine experience ”

“ Lips grow cold and dry; perspiration gushes from every pore of the brow and runs down the face; legs grow weak; eyes see nothing; hands swell to enormous proportions; violent pains shoot across the chest; the breath is confined within the lungs; from the clapper-like tongue comes only a faint click. Is it any wonder that under such physical agonies the mind refuses to respond—rather, is incapable of any action whatever?
Speech Based on Thought and Language. Every speech is a result of the combination of thought and language, of material and expression. ”

“ So beautiful indeed is its structure and choice of language that its author’s earlier and later vagaries and erratic indulgences in the most lax or bombastic habits of speech become hopelessly inexplicable. ”

“ Words that are mere scarecrows and effigies of fact litter the pages even of our best books. This abundance of trash-words tells us how loosely we think, how ignorant we are of exact knowledge, how much savagery remains in us, and still how antique is our period. Words that stand for other words—hazy symbols of empty signs—embarrass indeed all tongues. ”

“ Everyone must remember that children have heard slang and incorrect speech almost from infancy; that the playground, the street and the home have been steadily teaching, and that the minds of even primary children may be filled with not only loose forms of speech, but even with profane and indecent expressions. ”

“ Had the Gipsey tongue been analysed and committed to writing three centuries ago, there is every probability that many scores of words now in common use could be at once traced to its source. Instances continually occur now-a-days of street vulgarisms ascending to the drawing-rooms of respectable society. ”

“ If a person has lost all his teeth, he modifies the play of the lips and tongue, and so contrives to speak intelligibly. The voices of persons we know can be imitated so that the deception shall be perfect. By changing the timbre, the voice is made to sound as though it came from a cavern ”

“ How often calculation is folly and cowardice!
Before we can hear the Divine Voice we must shut out all other voices, so that we may be able to listen, to discern its faintest whisper. The most precious messages are those which are whispered. ”