A
... back to the slang menu ...
about
[1980-90] used as an intensifier in much the same way as 'really;'
"He's about a jerk," "You're about a sick bastard."
abracadabra
The word was widely believed to be capable of curing fever.
The first prescription for its use came from a poem on medicine
by Quintus Serenus Sammonicus, a doctor who accompanied
the Roman Emperor Severus on an expedition to Britain in 208 A.D.
The word was to be written on a triangular piece of paper.
The sheet of paper was to be worn on a piece of flax around
the patient's neck for nine days and then thrown backwards
over the shoulder into a stream that ran eastward.
Presumably, when the word disappeared, so would the ills
of the patient. [Man, Myth, and Magic, Volume 1, New York:
Marshall Cavendish, 1970]
ain't
According to a book I read on word origins by the editors at
Merriam-Webster, there were several different words which were
contractions for "am not", "is not", "are not", "have not", and "has
not" (and probably a few more that I've forgotten) which all converged
into one word. At one time, standard practice in contraction was to
remove the final consonant of the first word. Thus, instead of "isn't"
we had "in't", instead of "haven't" we had "han't", and so forth. (This
also explains "don't" as a contraction for "does not"; at one time this
was the standard.) Thanks in part to the tendency in many British
dialects to make the letter 'h' silent and in part to the great vowel
shift (and probably in part to simple confusion between the words), all
of these wound up becoming "ain't". And given that the word is being
used today, I wouldn't consider it "obsolete" at all. Just another
example of prescriptionists deciding a word was "wrong" without looking
at reality first. [Scott D. Rhodes, FIDO Words conference, Nov 95]
air banger
a brown-noser [The Good War, Studs Terkel]
air force gloves
[military] hands in pockets
airheads
also blissninnies
alpha geek
the person in the office who is good at troubleshooting problems with
the computer
angie dextrous
[from ambidextrous] reference to masturbation;
I had a date with Angie Dextrous.
see Rosie Palm
Top of Page