Slang time machine
Every English slang term has a moment it first showed up in print or on someone's lips. We've tagged 1,000 terms with a first attested decade — from 18th-century thieves’ cant through to 2020s internet vocabulary. Pick a decade below.
1870s — 7 terms
Showing top 7 by views70
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phonograph
1877🎤 Black culture & AAVE
bluesky
🔊all-rounder
1875⚡ Tech, Dev & AI
🔊Oscar Asche
1871🇦🇺 Australian & NZ slang
🔊dinkum
1879🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊eat crow
1870🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊rain check
1877⚡ Tech, Dev & AI
🔊Jimmy Britts
1879🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊muslin
1875🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊malarkey
1877🗺️ Regional & Other
bluesky
🔊Jap
1872⚡ Tech, Dev & AI
🔊Robertson screwdriver
1879🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊blessed assurance
1873🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊lollygag
1871🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊boiled shirt
1873🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊donkey's years
1876🇬🇧 British & Irish slang
🔊telephone
1876⚡ Tech, Dev & AI
bluesky
🔊two solitudes
1875🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊German sparrow
1870🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊one-horse town
1871🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊Johnson hole
1878🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊platypusary
1873🇦🇺 Australian & NZ slang
🔊hitch one's wagon to a star
1870🗺️ Regional & Other
🔊criminal tribe
1871⚡ Tech, Dev & AI
🔊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.