Slang time machine
Every English slang term has a moment it first showed up in print or on someone's lips. We've tagged 3,074 terms with a first attested decade — from 18th-century thieves’ cant through to 2020s internet vocabulary. Pick a decade below.
1860s — 37 terms
Showing top 37 by views60
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Lincoln
1865bluesky
🔊Met
1863🔊
Copperheadism
1860🔊
chuck wagon
1860🔊
dudes
1860bluesky
🔊scad
1869🔊
skat
1864🔊
moke
1860🔊
rep by pop
1867🔊
honyock
1860🔊
humbug
1864bluesky
🔊chiseler
1860🔊
slaw
1861bluesky
🔊farb
1863🔊
tenderfoot
1866🔊
down the banks
1862🔊
red cent
1864bluesky
🔊picky
1860bluesky
🔊Down syndrome
1860🔊
Gandhigiri
1869🔊
Saxon
1860bluesky
🔊scrimshaw
1865🔊
Peter Witt
1869🔊
poteen
1869🔊
AB
1860🔊
akether
1867🔊
hellhole
1866bluesky
🔊carburetor
1862bluesky
🔊on the up-and-up
1863🔊
Sainsbo's
1869🔊
rising of the moon
1865🔊
bicycle
1868bluesky
🔊Juneteenth
1865bluesky
🔊Dad and Dave
1868🔊
gasoline
1862bluesky
🔊dumbocracy
1869🔊
Quaker gun
1862🔊
More on how slang travels through time
The lifecycle of a slang word
Mint, scale, ironize, retire — how every viral term moves through the same five stages.
Where slang is born now
The platforms and subcultures that mint vocabulary in 2026 — and why TikTok shifted everything.
AAVE and internet slang
The single biggest source of new mainstream English vocabulary, and why most of the words you used today started here.
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.