I'm not one of those who feel the English language should be saved from slang.

On the contrary, I think slang and new words are an embodiment of the inventiveness of the human race. A new circumstance in life arises and, without anyone having to lift a finger, hours later there's a new word to describe it. We could not, now, do without cut-and-paste, for example, a phrase that describes precisely an ability that is as new to us as computer technology is.

And phreaking. Although not perhaps as necessary to our lives, it is as precise in its meaning, which is the process of hacking (there's another one) the phone system to get free phone calls - an ability as new as our digital telecommunication system.

Or, to get away from technology for a second, bling bling. The term was coined by New Orleans rap family Cash Money Millionaires back in the late ‘90s.

It's in the Oxford dictionary now, so it's official. I haven't got the OED's official definition, but I'm happy to give you my version. Originally, it meant white diamonds, but the meaning was quickly broadened to mean almost any piece of personal adornment, especially over-the-top adornment of the most extreme nature.

So now it means just about anything from a pimped-up Rolls Royce on through those white diamonds to a Mac-10 tucked tastefully into the trousers. It's a really excellent phrase, at least in part because it looks and sounds as extravagant as the things it describes (is there a word for that? I don't think so).

I think the word community ought to honour Cash Money in some way for their inventiveness. I do think, though, that the phrase will end up as one word, bling, because the second bling adds nothing to the business of the first, and we are logical, in the end, when it comes to making and using words.

There are hundreds upon hundreds of new words at any given time. Technological advances might have meant the 21st Century has a few more than at other periods, but the language is always full of them. Language is moving forward all the time, and slang, new words and new usages are the froth being kicked up by the bow of the boat.

There used to be a paragraph on the Merriam Webster dictionary website (quoted by writer Robert Hartwell Fiske in an article published last year in The Vocabula Review) that described the process in the froth: “Many new words pass out of English as quickly as they entered it, the fad of teenagers grown to adulthood, the buzzwords of business meetings past, the cast-off argot of technologies superseded, the catchy phrases from advertisements long forgotten. It is likely that many such ephemeral coinages will never be entered in dictionaries… That does not mean, however, that the words did not exist, simply that they did not endure.”

I'm no authority, but I'd have said another period during which slang words proliferated unusually was during the first half (give or take) of the 20th Century, in the golden age of pulp novels, noir movies and jazz-and-blues influenced song lyrics. New words spun off by technology are a little dry - there was much more fun to be had in the pulp and noir period, I think. Michael Storme, for example, wrote half a dozen novels you won't find in many libraries. One of them was a page-turner called ‘Hot Dames on Cold Slabs'.

Some of the terms he used are familiar and still in use today, like cop a plea, sourpuss, or paint the town red. Others, sadly, have died a death: If a guy wearing a cookie cutter (a policeman's badge), for example, catches you slipping the dose (shooting) to some nickel rat (cheap crook), perhaps with a Chicago piano (machine gun), you could be sniffing Arizona perfume (available only in gas chambers) and then they'll throw dirt in your face (bury you).

See what I mean about fun? Some of them hang on… but would date you pretty quickly if you used them. Cab Calloway co-wrote ‘Minnie the Moocher' (a red-hot hoochie-coocher, as I remember it) in 1931, two lines of which were: “She was the roughest, toughest frail, but Minnie had a heart as big as a whale.”

You hail a frail these days, people will be telling you your roof is leaking - you that old, daddy, your easy rider days done dead and gone.

Some of the best stuff from those days wasn't slang at all - it was just skill at using words in unusual ways. Raymond Chandler was one of the best of them. In ‘Farewell, My Lovely', he wrote: “It was a blonde. A blonde to make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window.”

In the same book, he says: “I poured her a slug that would have made me float over a wall.”

In ‘The Big Sleep', Humphrey Bogart's Marlowe says: “You know, you're the second guy I've met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.”

And in the same book he says - to a frail, of course - “On your way, dreamboat. Make with the feet.”

Or in the short story, ‘Trouble Is My Business', he has Phillip Marlowe say: “I remembered the half bottle of scotch I had left, and went into executive session with it.”

In the same book, Marlowe confesses: “I like smooth shiny girls, hard boiled and loaded with sin.”

And he says of one of them: “Her eyes were wide set, and there was thinking room between them.”

That other master of the genre, Dashiell Hammett, described one of those smooth, shiny girls this way: “By the time she was 21 in 1926, she definitely preferred Tenth Avenue to Fifth, grifters to bankers, and Hymie the Riveter to the Honourable Cecil Windown, who had asked her to marry him.”

Jim Thompson was no slouch in the words department. In ‘Savage Night', he wrote: “He was all duked out in a hard-boiled collar and a blue serge suit. There was a hatchet-faced dame with him in a stiff black satin dress and a hat that looked like a lamp shade.”

In ‘Naked in Vegas', John Denton wrote: “He found himself feeling sorry for the broad. She really looked like a rough night on the ocean.”

Paul Cain's character in ‘Fast One' said: “I've got a nice joint at the Ambassador, with a built-in bar; I've got a swell bunch of telephone numbers and several thousand friends at the bank.”

Remember Rico in ‘Little Caesar'? WR Burnett has him say: “I got lead in this here rod, and my finger's itching. One crack out of any of you and they'll pat you with a spade.”

Richard Prather in ‘The Kubla Khan Capers' had his character say: “Well, crazy, you have just destroyed three thousand of my corpuscles… Lady, you're more fun than a hot transfusion, you're really plasma. I think we could swing - if I knew the music.”

Rod Callahan in ‘Killers Don't Care' said: “She's a slinky piece of homework, with auburn hair and green eyes. She's wearing a low-cut dress of shimmering black which clings seductively to her ripe curves. Me, I get a thrill just looking at her.”

Perhaps Peter Cheyney was talking about the same woman in ‘Your Deal, My Lovely', when he wrote: “I am tellin' you that the south view of this dame from the east when she is walkin' north would make a blind man turn to hard liquor.”

And Johnathan Latimer said, of another, perhaps friendlier dame: “She gets a few slugs under her girdle and she thinks it's Christmas.”

Singers weren't far behind with the women, though.

The Hokum Boys sang, in ‘Somebody's Been Using That Thing': “My friend picked a new girl/ in a little dance hall/ he used to be a high stepper/ but now he can't walk at all.”

Jerry Irby and the Texas Ranchers, in ‘Forty-Nine Women', sang: “With a blonde-headed woman/ you need to get around/ but a black-haired girl/ will turn your damper down.”

Mel Robbins released a song in 1956 called ‘Are You With Me': “Your lips start me to burnin'/ with a desire an' a yearnin'/ to feel them cling to mine/ well, if you're with me, flash your welcome sign.”

And the last word is Fats Waller's, from ‘The Joint is Jumpin': “Check your weapons at the door/ Be sure to pay your quarter/ burn your leather on the floor/ grab anybody's daughter./ The roof is rockin'/ the neighbours are knockin'/ We're all bums when the wagon comes/ I mean, this joint is jumpin'.”

Long live that froth!

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