There was an interesting cultural phenomenom in Britain in
the 80s and 90s, when the massive (and unanticipated) success
of Australian day-time soap operas, particularly amongst
school children led to the appearance of Australian slang in
British playgrounds. Dag for a geek, or uncool person;
dobbing for grassing (or peaching to use the archaic english
term!), rack off to tell someone to go away rather quickly
and a number of others. Doing bird, or porridge, can indeed
be used as a prison term although I think more in fictional
than real criminal circles. Bird for a female is now more
often used in a knowing ironic way, it was always considered
terribly common. I suppose the idea of most slang is to
exclude your elders/authority figures, with a language they
can't understand so as soon as a slang is well enough known
to authors, lexicographers and the like it's pretty much dead
anyway. Mmmm is this an interesting problem for you
hard-boiled folks? Is inventing your own slang!
a better route as it can't become outmoded? Like
a Clockwork Orange. Having said that, reading Iceberg Slim, a
lot of the slang he uses seems to have lived on in black
street speech - from what I know, which is bugger all really.
Anyway, cheerio, toodle pip etc Colin
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