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.
1880s — 47 terms
Showing top 47 by views80
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grand (Irish)
1880🔊
Blighty
1886🔊
fraktur
1886bluesky
🔊munny
1885🔊
club soda
1880🔊
civvies
1889🔊
lah-di-dah
1880🔊
nothingburger
1881bluesky
🔊Sherrin
1880🔊
dude
1883bluesky
🔊racialism
1882🔊
Four Hundred
1888🔊
charley horse
1880🔊
ride shotgun
1882🔊
blower
1880bluesky
🔊gamgee
1880🔊
doodad
1880🔊
jack up
1885bluesky
🔊parrot and monkey time
1882🔊
AC
1880🔊
Johnny onions
1880🔊
rugger
1880🔊
mugwump
1884🔊
corn-pit
1883🔊
tadger
1883🔊
keister
1881🔊
granola
1886bluesky
🔊Medicine Line
1880🔊
drunk as Chloe
1883🔊
gurney
1883🔊
heffalump
1882🔊
count coup
1880🔊
billycan
1880🔊
soccer
1885bluesky
🔊potatoes and point
1880🔊
Duluth pack
1880🔊
milquetoast
1885bluesky
🔊hamfatter
1880🔊
gonad
1880🔊
graduand
1882🔊
last chance saloon
1883🔊
afternoonified
1880🔊
jitney
1886🔊
derecho
1888bluesky
🔊grand poobah
1885🔊
All-American
1880bluesky
🔊Rand formula
1884🔊
More on how slang travels through time
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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.