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.
1900s — 48 terms
Showing top 48 by views00
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Matilda
1906bluesky
🔊quilling
1900🔊
jam-tree
1907🔊
23 skidoo
1906🔊
fuddy-duddy
1904🔊
23 Skidoo Street
1906🔊
already
1903youtube
🔊non-U
1907🔊
pork roll
1906bluesky
🔊school shooting
1903bluesky
🔊gullywasher
1903🔊
muckraker
1906🔊
onkus
1903🔊
spiv
1904bluesky
🔊century
1901bluesky
🔊autism
1907bluesky
🔊doozy
1903bluesky
🔊Buggins's turn
1901🔊
wank
1905bluesky
🔊Limehouse
1909🔊
rorty
1903🔊
flyover
1905bluesky
🔊wirehouse
1904🔊
Peacock Alley
1904🔊
man on the Clapham omnibus
1903🔊
Jewphobia
1905🔊
grift
1906bluesky
🔊incept
1905🔊
big picture
1904bluesky
🔊Rolls-Royce
1904bluesky
🔊weekend
1903bluesky
🔊Barrett's esophagus
1903🔊
omnibus
1902bluesky
🔊Coalite
1904🔊
perfection salad
1904🔊
Carnegie unit
1906🔊
ginger talk
1905🔊
Adirondack chair
1903🔊
federation furniture
1901🔊
Billy Williams' Cabbage Patch
1907🔊
Lochnerize
1905🔊
Italian sandwich
1903bluesky
🔊clone
1903bluesky
🔊berserk
1903bluesky
🔊Blind Freddy
1907🔊
Secret Intelligence Service
1909🔊
black as Newgate's knocker
1902🔊
Mutt and Jeff
1908🔊
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.