Slang time machine

Every English slang term has a moment it first showed up in print or on someone's lips. We've tagged 4,786 terms with a first attested decade — from 18th-century thieves’ cant through to 2020s internet vocabulary. Pick a decade below.

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Attestation dates come from etymologies originally sourced from Wiktionary contributors (CC BY-SA 4.0) and editorial expansion authored on Slangora. They reflect the earliest documented use we found for each term, not necessarily the moment it was coined.

Slang time machine

1550s — 31 terms

More on how slang travels through time