Slang Quotes

“Hey, you sass that hoopy Ford Prefect? There's a frood who really knows where his towel is."
(Sass: know, be aware of, meet, have sex with; hoopy: really together guy; frood: really amazingly together guy.)”
― Douglas Adams, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

“Well,' said Can o' Beans, a bit hesitantly,' imprecise speech is one of the major causes of mental illness in human beings.'

Huh?'

Quite so. The inability to correctly perceive reality is often responsible for humans' insane behavior. And every time they substitute an all-purpose, sloppy slang word for the words that would accurately describe an emotion or a situation, it lowers their reality orientations, pushes them farther from shore, out onto the foggy waters of alienation and confusion.'

The manner in which the other were regarding him/her made Can O' Beans feel compelled to continue. 'The word neat, for example, has precise connotations. Neat means tidy, orderly, well-groomed. It's a valuable tool for describing the appearance of a room, a hairdo, or a manuscript. When it's generically and inappropriately applied, though, as it is in the slang aspect, it only obscures the true nature of the thing or feeling that it's supposed to be representing. It's turned into a sponge word. You can wring meanings out of it by the bucketful--and never know which one is right. When a person says a movie is 'neat,' does he mean that it's funny or tragic or thrilling or romantic, does he mean that the cinematography is beautiful, the acting heartfelt, the script intelligent, the direction deft, or the leading lady has cleavage to die for? Slang possesses an economy, an immediacy that's attractive, all right, but it devalues experience by standardizing and fuzzing it. It hangs between humanity and the real world like a . . . a veil. Slang just makes people more stupid, that's all, and stupidity eventually makes them crazy. I'd hate to ever see that kind of craziness rub off onto objects.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“She wanted more, more slang, more figures of speech, the bee's knees, the cats pajamas, horse of a different color, dog-tired, she wanted to talk like she was born here, like she never came from anywhere else”
― Jonathan Safran Foer, Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

“It's too late to be studying Hebrew; it's more important to understand even the slang of today.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Walking

“In many a case, the phrase ‘I’d like to get to know you better’ is a euphemism for ‘I want us to fuck.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana

“On the whole I try to keep Modesty and Willie in timeless settings, which is why I avoid all the latest slang and in-words. It won't be long before 'brill' sounds as dated as 'super' does now. [Uncle Happy, 1990]”
― Peter O'Donnell

“Slang is the suitcase of the damned, my dear. CHECK IT.”
― Heather Cocks

“We seem to be sitting around waiting for the next fucking disaster." he said, which went into the official log as - DCI Seawoll felt that our operational posture was too reactive.”
― Ben Aaronovitch, Lies Sleeping

“Shakespeare used the word 'flush' to indicate plenty of money. Well, just remember there was only one Shakespeare, and he was the only one that had a right to use that word in that sense . You'll never be a Shakespeare, there will never be such another— Nature exhausted herself in producing him.”
― Joseph Devlin, How To Speak And Write Correctly

“How did the name misfit even come about?" Sam asked. "It's so... dumb."
Willo laughed. "Well, it's really not," she said. "We used to call them all sorts of slang terms: kooks, greasers, killjoys, chumps, and we had to keep changing the name as times changed. We used nerds for a long time, and then we started calling them dweebs."
Willo hesitated. "And then a group of kids wasn't so nice to your mom."
"I had braces," Deana said. "I had pimples. I had a perm. You do the math."
She smiled briefly, but Sam could tell the pain was still there. Deana continued: "And I worked here most of the time so I really didn't get a chance to do a lot with friends after school. It was hard."
This time, Willo reached out to rub her daughter's leg. "Your mom was pretty down one Christmas," she said. "All of the kids were going on a ski trip to a resort in Boyne City, but she had to stay here and work during the holiday rush. She was moping around one night, lying on the couch and watching TV..."
"... stuffing holiday cookies in my mouth," Deana added.
"... and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer came on. She was about to change the channel, but I made her sit back down and watch it with me. Remember the part about the Island of Misfit Toys?"
Sam nodded.
Willo continued. "All of those toys that were tossed away and didn't have a home because they were different: the Charlie-in-the-Box, the spotted elephant, the train with square wheels, the cowboy who rides an ostrich..."
"... the swimming bird," Sam added with a laugh.
"And I told your mom that all of those toys were magical and perfect because they were different," Willo said. "What made them different is what made them unique."
Sam looked at her mom, who gave her a timid smile.
"I walked in early the next morning to open the pie pantry, and your mom was already in there making donuts," Willo said. "She had a big plate of donuts that didn't turn out perfectly and she looked up at me and said, very quietly, 'I want to start calling them misfits.' When I asked her why, she said, 'They're as good as all the others, even if they look a bit different.' We haven't changed the name since.”
― Viola Shipman, The Recipe Box

“A quick butchers shows up Old Bill three-handed, also a particularly nasty female grass–-and if looks were acid baths the two she collects from us would reduce her to gristle quicker than Mrs. Durand-Deacon.”
― Derek Raymond, The Crust on its Uppers

“I nod seriously, "Supes."
"You're mocking me."
"A little bit."
"People say supes!"
"What people?"
"I can't believe you're shaming me right now. I'm very sensitive about my use of cool vernacular."
"Then we're good. Because you haven't used any." I flash a grin.”
― Lauren Miller, All Things New

“Young people dislike and even fail to understand our slang; my gay students ask me what “tricking” means. It’s all old whore’s slang, of course.”
― Edmund White, The Unpunished Vice: A Life of Reading

“I hate those m***f***z
Who make friendship for business purpose....”
― Sajal Ahmed

“Does babygirl mean camp?”
― Matty Healy

“Rick and Scotty, who had heard Australian slang before from Digger Sears, one-time mate of the Tarpon, broke into chuckles.

"I'd better translate," Scotty said, "'Lord stone the crows' is just an expression. Oscar Ashe is hard cash. Yakka is hard work. And dinkum oil is gospel truth.”
― John Blaine, The Phantom Shark

“Ah, the boo. The boo is the most maligned, gossiped about, ridiculed figure in the pantheon of prison characters. Boo, which is short for the street term "booty call," is the casual girlfriend, the cheap feel in the sally port, the temporary object of someone's affections (although most boos don't realize the impermanence of their positions).”
― Erin George

“Who originates the latest slang terms that are, seemingly overnight, known to every black youth across the country?”
― Donald Jeffries, The Unreals

“Shocked, Raven flung back her head to listen more intently. “The wolves are talking to you! How do I know that, Mikhail? How could I possibly know such a thing?”
He ruffled her hair lightly, affectionately. “You hang out with the wrong crowd.”
He was rewarded with a bubble of laughter. It tugged at his heart, left him open and vulnerable.
“What is this?” she teased. “Lord of the manor picks up seventies slang?”
He grinned at her boyishly, mischievously. “Maybe I am the one hanging out with the wrong crowd.”
“And maybe there’s hope for you yet.” She kissed his throat, his chin, the stubborn line of his blue-shadowed jaw.”
― Christine Feehan, Dark Prince

“А вот еще сильное ощущение. Помню, однажды во втором классе я почему–то опоздал на школьный автобус, и пришлось маме везти меня в школу. Ей надо было на работу, а школа еще не открылась, так что я минут 15 стоял с портфельчиком и ждал. И там же стояли двое пятиклассников, одетых, как враги Джеймса Дина из фильма «Бунтарь без причины». Стояли болтали — настоящие хулиганы — и тут я услышал это слово: «shit». Раньше я никогда его не слышал. Однако почему–то мгновенно понял, что оно означает. Я был: поражен. Очень сильное впечатление — очень.”
― Iggy Pop, I Need More

“The proponents of Harlem jive talk ... do not hope that courses in the lingo will ever be offered at Harvard or Columbia. Neither do they expect to learn that Mrs. Faunteen-Chauncey of the Mayfair Set addresses her English butler as 'stud hoss', and was called in reply, 'a sturdy old hen.' -- Original Handbook of Harlem Jive, 1944.”
― Dan Burley, Dan Burley's Jive

“What the effing actual, am I right?”
― Alan Ghost, Young & Wild & Free: the Werewolves of Southern California

“Are you okay? Did that dickwad do or say something out of pocket to you?”
Her eyes slid open. “Dickwad?” she murmured. “Have you been watching Animal House or some other raunch com or something from the eighties? Or the nineties?”
― Jamie Wesley, Fake It Till You Bake It

“This is one of the dangers of their [teenagers] ineluctable depth: they live the poetry, the true value of the way words resonate and not their dictionary meanings or conventional uses. It's why teenage mouths are the hotbeds of slang, and its most natural environment. Some years only sounds would erupt: everyone saying "WOMP" to each other, because they liked the way it moved in their heads and echoed in their ears, big and rubbery and round.”
― Julia Langbein, American Mermaid

“There would be another, less formal tribute to the best of the 1972 series: the name [Phil] Esposito eventually found its way into Russian street slang. Apparently, whenever a luckless Russian hooligan accidentally burns himself on the stove or cuts himself on an unexpectedly sharp knife he winces and shouts out the worst curse imaginable:

Esposito!”
― Stephen Cole, Hockey Night Fever: Mullets, Mayhem and the Game's Coming of Age in the 1970s

“Replacing one word for another is ridiculous... The intention of it is where the problem resides, not in the spelling and pronunciation.”
― Percival Everett

“The slang 'Educated Fool' might be discovered by the Educated Society but mostly use by the Fools.”
― Md. Naeem Aziz

“Modern dating was a labyrinthine manscape riddled with trolls, bros, haters, and selfie-obsessed divos.”
― Duncan Ralston, In Every Dark Corner

“Every world has its distinct lingo,
you gotta catch the right chord.
Same language evokes different feelings,
based on time and age of the world.”
― Abhijit Naskar, The Divine Refugee

“The default digital world tone is one of hyperactive friendliness, artificial empathy, emoji-based validation, dopamine-rich feedback loops, toxic positivity, and veiled cruelty. They assume communication is always good, that speaking is a virtue, and that interaction is life. Because they know nothing.”
― Sov8840