What is "argot"

Argot \Ar`got"\, n. [F. Of unknown origin.] A secret language or conventional slang peculiar to thieves, tramps, and vagabonds; flash.

1860, from French argot (17c.) "the jargon of Paris rogues and thieves," earlier "the company of beggars," from Middle French argot, "group of beggars," origin unknown. Gamillscheg suggests a connection to Old French argoter "to cut off the stubs left in pruning," with a connecting sense of "to get a grip on." The best English equivalent is perhaps cant. The German equivalent is Rotwelsch, literally "Red Welsh," but the first element may be connected with Middle High German rot "beggar." Earlier in English was pedlar's French (1520s) "language of thieves and vagabonds."

n. 1 A secret language or conventional slang peculiar to thieves, tramps and vagabonds. 2 The specialized informal vocabulary and terminology used between people with special skill in a field, such as between doctors, mathematicians or hackers; a jargon.

n. a characteristic language of a particular group (as among thieves); "they don't speak our lingo" [syn: cant, jargon, slang, lingo, patois, vernacular]

An argot (; from French argot ‘ slang’) is a secret language used by various groups—e.g., schoolmates, outlaws, colleagues, among many others—to prevent outsiders from understanding their conversations. The term argot is also used to refer to the informal specialized vocabulary from a particular field of study, occupation, or hobby, in which sense it overlaps with jargon.

Author Victor Hugo was one of the first to research argot extensively. He describes it in his 1862 novel Les Misérables as the language of the dark; at one point, he says, "What is argot; properly speaking? Argot is the language of misery."

The earliest known record of the term argot in this context was in a 1628 document. The word was probably derived from the contemporary name les argotiers, given to a group of thieves at that time.

Under the strictest definition, an argot is a proper language with its own grammar and style. But such complete secret languages are rare because the speakers usually have some public language in common, on which the argot is largely based. Such argots are mainly versions of another language, with a part of its vocabulary replaced by words unknown to the larger public; argot used in this sense is synonymous with cant. For example, argot in this sense is used for systems such as verlan and louchébem, which retain French syntax and apply transformations only to individual words (and often only to a certain subset of words, such as nouns, or semantic content words). Such systems are examples of argots à clef, or "coded argots."

Specific words can go from argot into common speech or the other way. For example, modern French loufoque ‘crazy, goofy’, now common usage, originates in the louchébem transformation of Fr. fou ‘crazy’.