[Another pitch that merely sputtered out, rather than embellished a commercially viable idea.1 Or so I was informed. Perversely fascinated by the wide range of non-human creatures offered shelter amidst slang’s ever-welcoming rescues (no kennels, no cages, let all walk, fly, swim, hop, skip or jump where they wish) I still see it as a runner. Would you tell King Babar here that he’s not wanted between the covers?]
Language is bipedal. Two legs talk, four legs (not to mention sets of wings, gills and antennae) keep schtum. The natural world, with its animals, birds, fish and insects, undoubtedly communicates, but it is left to humanity to speak2. A few smart specimens may have been taught a set of words, often commands, but we are not thinking conversation. Let alone such games as imagery and metaphor. Those typewriting (if mythological) apes have yet to produce a line of Shakespeare, but he used ape, and the names of dozens more of nature’s creatures to delineate human characteristics. He was not the first. Such zoomorphism is a given of our image-making.
Slang, that part of the language where words, one might suggest, run wild, will grab hold of any image it can to provide and embellish its vocabulary. And looking through 150,000-plus words and phrases that make up that vocabulary, it’s impossible not to notice the regular appearance of the animal kingdom. In what we might call reverse anthropomorphism, slang takes the stereotyped animal characteristics, and appropriates them for its own, usually contrary uses. Whether such stereotypes hold true to animal behavior is irrelevant: they are, after all, stereotypes and serve as such. It will come as no surprise to learn that all but a few of these are negative. The dog, for instance, may have been allotted such positive characteristics as loyalty, bravery and even intelligence, but of the 161 definitions that our allegedly best friend has provided slang, virtually every one suggests a far from admirable characteristic. Some, such as the cockatoo, Australia’s term for a small farmer, are neutral (but even that was based on a reference to Cockatoo Island, one of the first convict settlements). And some, usually involving some form of affection – the chick, the duck – are positive. But most – let’s hear it for the ever-unfortunate pig and equally downtrodden donkey – are negative through and through.
The aim of this (shortish) book would be to offer a collection of slang’s wonderfully all-encompassing animal imagery. I suggest a couple of possible formats below, and list a preliminary roundup, as yet unsorted, of the range of creatures that would qualify. The book would naturally lend itself to illustrations, since every term is of course an image.
If such a book has a more formal origin, it lies perhaps in the medieval Bestiaries. Properly known as a Bestiarum Vocabulum, literally ‘the Naming of the Beasts,’ these collections, often with wonderfully imaginative illustrations (e.g above: a two-headed bird dragon ouroboros creature from the medieval Aberdeen Bestiary), took a selection of animals (both known and imaginary) and used their supposed characteristics to provide moral tales. One might see them as a form of fable, based on the symbolic language of animals.
Slang’s menagerie is far less portentous, and it will come as no surprise to learn than ‘moral’, at least in the orthodox sense, is not in its dictionaries, but it rivals any real-life zoo. As is so regularly the case with the counter-language’s concerns, it provides a waterfront that while narrow – we shall encounter the usual variations of sex, drugs and, in its widest sense ‘rock and roll’, the insults, the racism, the oaths and the rest of slang’s unrestrained demonstration of a linguistically unfettered self – but one which is remarkably deep. The list that follows offers around 150 species (and further analysis is sure to yield even more), but many of these, as with the dog, have served for multiple meanings. The cat, take another domestic favourite, has lent itself to some two hundred and the lowly rat one hundred and forty five. While these meanings will be spread around the book’s themes, their concentration in an Index of Animals (see samples below) should offer another way of looking at the topic and underline the glorious inventiveness of slang’s borrowings. If space permits, and where slang has terms to offer, there would be lists of slang’s ‘straight’ definitions, e.g. a dog offers 20: bow-wow, buffer, bufe, cannis-cove, growler, mutt and others, plus five terms from rhyming slang. These in turn are often appropriated for their own image.
_________
A preliminary selection of candidates:
A Sample Index of Animals En-Slanged:
aardvark
as fool
alligator
as aggressor, sexual
as aggressor, violent
as chatterbox
as fish
as Floridan
as horse
as human being
as jazz fan
as jazz musician
as singer
as worthless individual
anteater
as circumcised male
as erect penis
ape
as black person
as general pejorative (stupid, lumbering)
as liquor
as peasant
as thug, hoodlum
as worker (fruit-picker, logger)
ass
as anus, buttocks
as body, thus generic individual
as disgusting object
as essence, being
as final puff of cigarette
as fool
as mentality, personality
as rear of object
as sexual intercourse
as unpleasant person
as vagina
as woman
________________________
Format:
There are two possible ways of approaching the material. The one is based on the zoomorphic imagery, and as such refers back more directly to the formal Bestiaries, and the other on the simple animal names, grouped by species and the environment in which one might most likely encounter them.
1. By Human Type:
Introduction (the generic terms: e.g. animal / beast / bird / cattle / creature / fish)
The Braggart
The Brute
The Coward
The Drunkard
The Fool
The Glutton
The Hero
The Hypocrite
The Lecher
The Liar
The Lover
The Miser
The Monster
The Sage
The Sportsman
The Sycophant
The Temptress
The Thief
The Traitor
[etc.]
2. By Animal Species:
1. The Basics (the generic terms: e.g. animal / beast / bird / cattle / creature / fish)
2. Pets’ Corner (our [furry] friends)
3. Down on the Farm (the domestic menagerie/menus in the making)
4. Wild & Woolly (in the wild and at the zoo)
5. On the Slab (from beneath river and sea)
6. The Creepy and the Crawly (more than four legs – or none)
7. Strange But . . . (animals of the imagination)
____________________________________________
[I offer, as examples of what might be found in the final Strange, But … section, the following, a brief tour of slang’s teratology:]
bobo-johnny [? Yoruba buburu, bad, evil + Johnny, a man] [20C+] (W.I.) 1 a bogeyman, an imaginary monster conjured up to frighten naughty children. 2 a peasant, an unsophisticated country person.
bunyip [SE bunyip, ‘the Aboriginal name of a fabulous monster inhabiting the rushy swamps and lagoons in the interior of Australia’ (OED)] [mid-19C+] (Aus., Sydney) an impostor, a pretender, humbug; also as adj.
cockatrice [SE cockatrice, a hybrid monster with head, wings and feet of a cock, terminating in a serpent with a barbed tail] 1 [16C–mid-19C] (also cock-trick) a prostitute [such a monster can kill with a mere glance + pun on cock, the penis + fem. sfx -trix; J.O. Halliwell, editor/reviser of Robert Nares’ Glossary (1822), suggests that it ‘seems to be applied especially to a [sea] captain’s concubine’]. 2 [18C–19C] a baby [the monster is born from an egg].
dragon 1 [17C–early 18C] a slattern, a promiscuous woman. 2 [1950s–60s] an old prostitute. 3 [1960s] (N.Z.) a wife.
dragon 2 [the image of St George and the dragon engraved on the obverse of the coin] [19C] a sovereign.
dragon 3 [backform. f. chase the dragon, to inhale the smoke of heated, liquified heroin] [1980s+] (drugs) heroin.
dragon 4 [1980s+] (US) a (large) penis.
■ drain the dragon to urinate
dragon 5 [such a person ‘breathes fire’] [1980s+] (US campus) a person with particularly bad breath, aka dragon breath.
dragon upon St George [the female ‘dragon’ mounts the male ‘St George’] [late 17C–18C] the cowgirl/reverse cowgirl position of sexual intercourse in which the woman ‘rides’ her partner.
gorgon [the mythical Gorgon, whose hair was made of writhing snakes] [1950s+] 1 (W.I. Rasta) outstanding dreadlocks. 2 (W.I.) a thug, a ruffian; thus as a term of address.
gormagon [? SE Gorgon + dragon, the nonsense word was supposedly ‘Chinese’. Defined by Grose (1785) as ‘A monster with six eyes, three mouths, four arms, eight legs, five on one side and three on the other, three arses, two tarses, and a **** [cunt] upon its back’. Note mid-18C secret society, the Gormogons, a short-lived imitation of the Freemasons] [18C] a man on horseback with a woman riding side-saddle behind him.
half-horse, half-alligator [characteristics of the animals] [19C+] (US) of a man, notably tough, esp. of a river-boatman; also used of a woman.
griffin [SE griffin, a mythical animal, with the head and wings of an eagle and the body of a lion] 1 [18C–19C] a fool; thus griffinish adj., foolish. 2 [early 19C–1920s] a menacing woman, a ‘gorgon’.
harpy n. [SE harpy, ‘A fabulous monster, rapacious and filthy, having a woman’s face and body and a bird’s wings and claws, and supposed to act as a minister of divine vengeance’ (OED); in Homer the Harpies personified hurricanes and whirlwinds] [1940s+] an old woman.
King Kong [the name of the fictitious monster ape, who ‘starred’ in the film King Kong (1933)] 1 [1930s–60s] (US black) (also kong) cheap, potent, homemade whisky. 2 [1970s] (US drugs) a strong addiction.
■ King Kong pills [1960s+] (drugs) barbiturates.
leggo beast [SE let go, uncontrolled, without an owner + beast] [1940s+] (W.I.) 1 a tramp. 2 a person, usu. a woman, with loose morals; by ext. a prostitute.
mermaid [the mythical fish-women (based on the Greek sirens) reputed to lure sailors to their doom] 1 [16C–17C] a prostitute. 2 [2000s] (N.Z.) a police officer at a weigh station [because they are ‘cunts with scales’] .
modock [‘a flashy chap who goes around wearing helmet and goggles, and more than likely, leather boots and riding breeches, too, and talking about the big things he is going to do for aviation’ (Allen & Lyman, Wonder Book of the Air, 1936). Supposedly a mythical bird, which ‘flies backwards to keep the sun out of its eyes’, but other than an aviators’ joke, this has no validity as an ety.] [1930s–40s] (US) one who becomes an aviator for the social prestige or publicity.
ornythorhynchus [SE ornithorhynchus, a duck-billed platypus, i.e. the punning ‘beast with a bill’] [late 19C] (Aus.) a creditor.
ringtailed snorter (also ringtailed roarer, ...peeler, ...squealer, ...tooter, ...whizzer, ringtail snorter) [ringtailed, superlative, unique, extraordinary + SE snorter, perhaps of dragon-like fire] [early 19C+] (US) an impressive person, usu. physically aggressive; occas. an impressive thing.
salamander [SE salamander, a mythical lizard-like animal, once thought to be capable of living in fire; used in the 17C to invoke sexual coldness (i.e. the cold-blooded lizard)] [mid–late 19C] a fire-eating juggler.
she-centaur [SE centaur, ‘a fabulous creature, with the head, trunk, and arms of a man, joined to the body and legs of a horse’ (OED); the play is on ‘horseriding’ and ride, to have sex] [late 17C] a lesbian.
scolopendra [SE scolopendra, a centipede or millipede, orig. ‘a fabulous sea-fish which feeling himselfe taken with a hooke casteth out his bowels vntill hee hath vnloosed the hooke and then swalloweth them vp againe’ (Bullokar, English Expositour, 1616)] [mid-17C] a prostitute (the imagery possibly references venereal disease and/or the vagina dentata.)
snollygoster [Ger. schnelle Geister, lit. ‘wild host’, and thus a bird of prey that terrorizes man, or schnelle Geeschte, lit. ‘quick spirits’ are suggested but neither accepted by the authorities. According to Safire (Political Dict., 1978), it was coined during or near the time of the US Civil War (1861–5); there may be a link to the Maryland snallygaster, a mythical monster supposedly part reptile and part bird, designed to terrify ex-slaves out of voting] [mid-19C+] (US) a shrewd, unprincipled person, esp. a politician.
stenner [abbr. Frankenstein, whose monster had such a forehead] [1990s+] (UK juv.) a person who has a larger than average forehead.
two-backed beast (also beast of two backs) [the first cited use of the phr. is by Shakespeare, in Othello (1604); it also occurs in French, where Rabelais uses faire la bête à deux dos] the act of intercourse. Thus make the beast with two backs (also do the two-backed beast, make the double-backed beast) to have sexual intercourse
unicorn n. [the image of the unicorn’s protruding horn + a play on horns, the image of cuckoldry] 1 [17C] a cuckold. 2 [late 18C–mid-19C] a coach drawn by three horses, two abreast and one in the lead. 3 [late 19C] a woman and two men/two women and a man in league for criminal purposes.
■ go the complete unicorn [mid-19C] to make a display of oneself.
whangdoodle (also wangdoodle) [nonsense word] (US) 1 [mid-19C] a mythical beast of uncertain character. 2 [late 19C+] an unspecified object, something one does not know the name of [fig. use of sense 1]. 3 [1920s] nonsense. 4 [1920s] jazz music.
yahoo n.1 [Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels (1726), in which the Yahoos were an imaginary race of brutes having the form of men; note Aus. yahoo, a prob. mythical creature resembling a large hairy man, said to haunt eastern Australia] 1 [18C+] a person lacking cultivation or sensibility, a philistine, a hooligan.
As ever, just because I haven’t been able to sell the idea, that doesn’t mean that you can try. Paws off, Percy!
I fully accept that there almost certainly exist libraries of academic studies that render my suggestion nonsense and confer all sorts of ‘speech’ upon non-human actots, but please bear with an old lexicographer who has a hard enough time dealing with the form of communication to which he has dedicated his life.