Slangin'
By Michael Brooks
Sports Writer
Cut4, a sports page on Facebook, used the headline “We cooked up a BatCast jawn for this epic Philadelphia Phillies walk-off.”
My response was the same as any normal person’s response would be. “Jawn? It's hard to understand a headline that uses fake words.”
(I have seen the movie Creed, and this is the only place I have ever seen this word used. I honestly thought the girl was just making up words to mess with Adonis’ head.)
Of course, it is the internet, so someone was there to put me in my place.
“It's slang old man, keep up,” said some random internet troll.
As a kid, I remember hearing a bunch of slang that made no sense to me. English is amazing. It is always evolving. The spelling of words has changed over the years. The meaning of words has changed over the years.
Did you know that Webster’s Dictionary has added a nother definition to “literally?” It now means the same thing as figuratively. I am not joking.
So, where did these archaic names and terms come from? There seem to be more things with odd names than you can shake a stick at. The other day I was eating some seafood and got to wondering where the name hush puppies came from. As you know, hush puppies are the bee’s knees, so I really wanted to know.
Did you know the term hush puppy was invented by a Englishman in the early 1800’s? His name was Sir Samuel Drake and he was an avid dog lover. The problem was, every time he would cook a meal, his dogs would start yapping. He discovered that by throwing some dough in the fryer for a bit and then tossing them to the dogs, they would hush their yapping.
Isn’t this knowledge radical? I know a lot of you are saying “Well, I’ll be a monkey’s uncle” about this new information. But without new information, how else will you know what’s up?
Well, the truth is, the hush puppy anecdote I told you is a lie. Well, it’s not a total lie, Daddy-O. The origin of hush puppies is another one of those things that has no definitive answer. There are a lot of other legends about hush puppies and no one really knows which one is true.
The point it, don’t believe everything you read, especially if it is on Facebook. Do a little research and verify. It is so much more satisfying to know if something is true or not, can you dig it? All that fake information on Facebook can gag me with a spoon.
But if you want to get jiggy with some neat information, do a little research on the history of slang words. I think you will find it interesting. But if you don’t, don’t blame me.
Homie don’t play that.