21 October 2014

argot

[ahr-goh, -guh t]

noun
1. a specialized idiomatic vocabulary peculiar to a particular class or group of people, especially that of an underworld group, devised for private communication and identification:
a Restoration play rich in thieves’ argot.
2. the special vocabulary and idiom of a particular profession or social group:
sociologists’ argot.

Origin

Latin

1855-1860; < French, noun derivative of argoter to quarrel, derivative Latin ergō ergo with v. suffix -oter

Related forms

argotic [ahr-got-ik]

Dictionary.com

Examples from the web for argot
– Some novices feel compelled to create lexicons of their new argot.
– In the argot of civil rights, high lending lending standards will result in what is called disparate impact.
– Or, to put it in the argot familiar to every first-year law student, money is fungible.

Anagram

Gator
go art

Today’s aphorism

If moderation is a fault, then indifference is a crime.

– Jack Kerouac

On this day

21 October 1492 – Christopher Columbus discovers America.

21 October 1772 – birthday of Samuel Taylor Colleridge, English poet.

21 October 1833 – birth of Alfred Bernhard Nobel, Swedish chemist and armaments manufacturer, inventor of dynamite and the Nobel Prizes. Was known as the ‘Merchant of Death’. A newspaper stated that he ‘became rich by finding ways to kill people faster than ever before‘. As a result, he decided to leave a better legacy than that and used his estate to establish and fund the Nobel Prizes, which included the Nobel Peace Prize. Died 10 December 1896.

21 October 1967 – Thousands of anti-Vietnam-war protestors attempt to storm the Pentagon.

21 October 1969 – death of Jack Kerouac, American beat-generation writer, ‘On the road‘. Born 12 March 1922.