Ghost

“the GHOST doesn’t walk,” a theatrical term which implies that there is no money about, and that there will be no “treasury.” Gibberish , unmeaning jargon; the language of the gipsies, synonymous with SLANG , another Gipsy word. Somner says, “ French , GABBER ; Dutch , GABBEREN ; and our own GAB , GABBER ; hence also, I take it, our GIBBERISH , a kind of canting language used by a sort of rogues we vulgarly call gipsies, a gibble-gabble understood only among themselves.” See Introduction . The GIBBERISH of schoolboys is formed by placing a consonant between each syllable of a word, and is called the GIBBERISH of the letter inserted. Thus, if F were the letter, it would be termed the F GIBBERISH ; if L, the L GIBBERISH —as in the sentence, “How do you do?— Howl dol youl dol? ” A GIBBERISH is sometimes formed by adding vis to each word, in which the previous sentence would be—“ Howvis dovis youvis dovis? ” These things are worthy of schoolboys, as they are in ability far below the rhyming, the back, or the centre slang, each of which is constructed by people po e ing no claim to literary excellence whatever. Schoolboys in France form a GIBBERISH , in a somewhat similar manner, by elongating their words two syllables, in the first of which an r , in the second a g , predominates. Thus the words vous êtes un fou are spoken, vousdregue esdregue undregue foudregue . Fast persons in Paris, of both sexes, frequently adopt terminations of this kind, from some popular song, actor, exhibition, or political event. In 1830, the favourite termination was mar , saying épicemar for épicier, cafémar for café. In 1823, when the diorama created a sensation in Paris, the people spoke in ram a ( on parlait en ram a .) In Balzac’s beautiful tale, Le Père Goriot , the young painter at the boarding-house dinner-table mystifies the landlady by saying, “What a beautiful so up eau ram a !” To which the old woman replies, to the great laughter of the company, “I beg your pardon, sir, it is une soupe à choux .” These adaptations can hardly be called slang, or we shall have everybody making a slang of his own, and refusing to believe in any one’s else—a sort of secondhand edition of the Tower of Babel.