Slang

For the past few years, Lara DiPaola has come home from her job in marketing and started her second job, as an unofficial translator for her 13-year-old-daughter, Katie. Like many teens, Katie speaks in abbrevs — shortened or combined versions of words or phrases, popular in text messages and on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It's up to DiPaola to fill in the missing letters. "I'd say to my daughter, 'Katie, where did you leave the blow-dryer?' and she'd respond, 'IDK,'" said DiPaola, who lives in Severn.

The ever-game Steve Kleinedler of the American Heritage Dictionary took on one of those chores that regularly fall to lexicographers: He appeared on Boston's WBUR to talk about words people want deleted from dictionaries .  Literally  and impacted  left my eyebrows level. Yeah, yeah. And some unduly excitable types, you'll see in the comments, got exercised when the executive editor of the American Heritage Dictionary , in the unbuttoned atmosphere of conversation uttered "a whole nother.

Hovering in the shadows at her teen-age son's party, Carline Moore overhears this snatch of conversation:"There it is. This jam is thick. Plenty of mad honeys, dope system.""We phat. But I gotta flex. I'll be maxin' at the crib.""I'm easin' here. Later.""Later."Come again?For the uninitiated, it's the language of the hip-hop generation, and it can be heard in malls, on the street and in classrooms -- even prep-school classrooms.Hoopty, hotty, hoochie. Slang is colorful, descriptive patter that eases communication among young folks while keeping parents and teachers at bay. If you talk to teens, you'd best be savvy because slanguage is always changing, always confounding.

Is this Maryland's best sandwich (pictured above)? It sure looks great. Food Network Magazine has proclaimed the pit beef sandwich at Pioneer Pit Beef the single must-try sandwich in Maryland. The Pit Beef sandwich joins 49 other notables in the feature "50 Sandwiches, 50 States," available on newsstands Tuesday and online at blog.foodnetwork.com . On the Pit Beef sandwich, the editors write: “'Pit beef' is Baltimore's slang for this beloved classic: sliced slow-grilled beef piled high on a soft kaiser bun.”  The sandwich is available for $5.50 at 1600 N. Rolling Road.

Like it or not, the '60s word "chick" is back on the scene. Other bits of hippie slang -- like stone fox -- may languish in the retro-chic ragbag.But chick is chic.Chrissie Hynde of the Pretenders says she likes being called a chick. So do the Dixie Chicks.A baby shower invitation for Mary Matalin of CNBC's "Equal Time" said, "Chicks Only."Hillary Rodham Clinton laughed when the media called her trip to Asia a "chicks' trip."PBS ran an all-female movie-reviewer show called "Chicks on Flicks," and a new summer movie, "A Little Princess," is now being dubbed a "chick-ette movie" for young girls.

As the scene opens, two girls are discussing their sneakers in front of lockers on the third floor at Francis M. Wood Senior High School. It seems the $95 pair owned by one girl is no longer chic."

Aaron Peckham is, by his own definition, an "enginerd." But this is one software engineer who loves earthly argot as much as cyber-coding. Peckham, 24, compiles the cultish compendium of old-school and fresh-from-the-street slang known as Urbandictionary .com. Last month, the best of the site was published in the real world - or meatspace, as the cyber-dudes call it. Although the 300,000 Web entries are pared to 2,000 for Urban Dictionary: Fularious Street Slang Defined (Andrews McMeel, $12.95)

Generation O is slang for the current group of obese youngsters. -- Wired magazine

Is this Maryland's best sandwich (pictured above)? It sure looks great. Food Network Magazine has proclaimed the pit beef sandwich at Pioneer Pit Beef the single must-try sandwich in Maryland. The Pit Beef sandwich joins 49 other notables in the feature "50 Sandwiches, 50 States," available on newsstands Tuesday and online at blog.foodnetwork.com . On the Pit Beef sandwich, the editors write: “'Pit beef' is Baltimore's slang for this beloved classic: sliced slow-grilled beef piled high on a soft kaiser bun.”  The sandwich is available for $5.50 at 1600 N. Rolling Road.

J.E. LIGHTER and his publishers at Random House have some nerve, tempting us with the first volume of the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, but giving us only seven letters worth of entries. Entries H - R won't be available until 1996 and it is speculated that we won't be able to put our hands on S - Z until 1997.Admittedly, the HDAS (which may become the PDR equivalent for writers, crossword puzzlers and other language lovers) is made up of 20,000-plus entries of A - G slang.

For the past few years, Lara DiPaola has come home from her job in marketing and started her second job, as an unofficial translator for her 13-year-old-daughter, Katie. Like many teens, Katie speaks in abbrevs — shortened or combined versions of words or phrases, popular in text messages and on social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. It's up to DiPaola to fill in the missing letters. "I'd say to my daughter, 'Katie, where did you leave the blow-dryer?' and she'd respond, 'IDK,'" said DiPaola, who lives in Severn.

In an antic moment last week, The New Yorker  pitched an appeal to readers:  What word would you most like to eliminate from the English language?   Awesome  and  epic  won some votes because of overuse, phlegm  from disgustingness, but moist , which has recently taken on an evil odor, overwhelmed. In its wisdom, however, The New Yorker chose slacks  as a word worthy of extinction .  This game, as Stan Carey points out at Sentence First , always draws a lot of players . In fact, as you can see on the comments at Johnson 's post on the same subject , all you have to do is broach the subject, and people start trotting out their nominees, like so many would-be Torquemadas hustling the condemned to the stake.  The extremity of the responses speaks to how much we personalize the language.

A WeatherBlog reader, Hazmat77, takes issue with my reference to this season as fall. "Frank, the official name for this season is Autumn. 'Fall' is basically slang when used to describe Autumn." Really? It's the fifth definition of "fall" as a noun in my office dictionary. An older dictionary at home likes it, too, at least for use in the U.S. And the Associated Press Stylebook is okay with "fall" as a season (lowercase, please).

OCTOGENARIAN.BLOGSTER.COM What's the point? -- Whether ranting about politics, cremation or her neighbors, the 80-year-old sasspot who writes this blog curses like a sailor and tells it straight, throwing out modern slang as deftly as a teen. She's the saucy but wise ol' broad you see all the time in sitcoms, but never actually meet in real life. Unlike those dames on television, though, the Octogenarian is a person of depth and complexity, and she holds nothing back in her public diary.

The woman on the pinkish-red billboards dotting the cityscape is hard to miss. She is black, beautiful, proud and defiant. Staring at us from behind her black-rimmed glasses, we know she's all business because she tells us so. "I don't give it up. And I'm not giving in," the words practically shout. Driving by her on St. Paul Street near the train station, on Interstate 83 heading north, Orleans Street heading east or any of the other locations where she can be found, we read her message and ponder her life every day. What is it, we wonder, that she's not giving up?

Aaron Peckham is, by his own definition, an "enginerd." But this is one software engineer who loves earthly argot as much as cyber-coding. Peckham, 24, compiles the cultish compendium of old-school and fresh-from-the-street slang known as Urbandictionary .com. Last month, the best of the site was published in the real world - or meatspace, as the cyber-dudes call it. Although the 300,000 Web entries are pared to 2,000 for Urban Dictionary: Fularious Street Slang Defined (Andrews McMeel, $12.95)

A WeatherBlog reader, Hazmat77, takes issue with my reference to this season as fall. "Frank, the official name for this season is Autumn. 'Fall' is basically slang when used to describe Autumn." Really? It's the fifth definition of "fall" as a noun in my office dictionary. An older dictionary at home likes it, too, at least for use in the U.S. And the Associated Press Stylebook is okay with "fall" as a season (lowercase, please).

HAPPY ST. PADDY'S DAY. No offense. Until recently "Paddy" was always thought of as a term of endearment. I still think of it that way, as do my Irish friends and relatives.But, naturally, in this age of political correctness, "Paddy" is officially no longer affectionate. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary (Tenth Edition, 1993) defines "Paddy" as "Irishman" and adds this: "often taken to be offensive."The Ninth Edition (1986) doesn't say that. Nor does the unabridged Merriam-Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961)

Unless you've been living in a spider hole, it will neither shock nor awe you to learn that military slang has become increasingly, uh, embedded in American popular culture. While hardly a new phenomenon - the military has been a source of American slang since the Revolutionary War - it does seem to be having a growth spurt. Ever since the World Trade Center was designated "ground zero," it has been (damn the torpedoes) full speed ahead for military jargon. Not all of it reaches catch- phrase status.

Generation O is slang for the current group of obese youngsters. -- Wired magazine