The word SLANG is only mentioned by two lexicographers—Webster and Ogilvie. Johnson, Walker, and the older compilers of dictionaries, give _slang_ the preterite of _sling_, but not a word about SLANG in the sense of low, vulgar, or unrecognised language. The origin of the word has often been asked for in literary journals and books, but only one man, as far as I can learn, has ever hazarded an etymology—Jonathan Bee, the vulgar chronicler of the prize-ring.[40] With a recklessness peculiar to pugilism, Bee stated that SLANG was derived from “the _slangs_ or fetters worn by prisoners, having acquired that name from the manner in which they were worn, as they required a sling of string to keep them off the ground.” Bee had just been nettled at Pierce Egan producing a new edition of _Grose’s Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_, and was determined to excel him in a vulgar dictionary of his own, which should be more racy, more pugilistic, and more original. How far he succeeded in this latter particular his ridiculous etymology of Slang will show. SLANG is not an English word, it is the Gipsey term for their secret language, and its synonyme is GIBBERISH—another word which was believed to have had no distinct origin.[41] Grose—stout and burly Captain Grose—who we may characterise as the greatest antiquary, joker, and drinker of porter of his day, was the first author who put the word SLANG into print. It occurs in his _Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue_, of 1785, with the signification that it implies “Cant or vulgar language.” Grose, I may remark in passing, was a great favourite with the poet Burns, and so pleased by his extensive powers of story-telling and grog-imbibing, that the companionable and humour-loving Scotch bard wrote for his fat friend—or, to use his own words, “the fine, fat, fodgel wight”—the immortal poem of “Tam O’Shanter.” Without troubling the reader with a long account of the transformation into an English term of the word SLANG, I may remark in passing that it is easily seen how we obtained it from the Gipseys. Hucksters and beggars on tramp, or at fairs and races, associate and frequently join in any rough enterprise with the Gipseys. The word would be continually heard by them, and would in this manner soon become CANT;[42] and, when carried by “fast” or vulgar fashionables from the society of thieves and low characters to their own drawing-rooms, would as quickly become SLANG, and the representative term for all vulgar or Slang language.