In addition to the philological origins just indicated, slang possesses other and still more natural roots, which spring, so to speak, from the mind of man itself.
In the first place, the direct creation of words. Therein lies the mystery of tongues. To paint with words, which contains figures one knows not how or why, is the primitive foundation of all human languages, what may be called their granite.
Slang abounds in words of this description, immediate words, words created instantaneously no one knows either where or by whom, without etymology, without analogies, without derivatives, solitary, barbarous, sometimes hideous words, which at times possess a singular power of expression and which live. The executioner, le taule ; the forest, le sabri ; fear, flight, taf ; the lackey, le larbin ; the mineral, the prefect, the minister, pharos ; the devil, le rabouin . Nothing is stranger than these words which both mask and reveal. Some, le rabouin , for example, are at the same time grotesque and terrible, and produce on you the effect of a cyclopean grimace.
In the second place, metaphor. The peculiarity of a language which is desirous of saying all yet concealing all is that it is rich in figures. Metaphor is an enigma, wherein the thief who is plotting a stroke, the prisoner who is arranging an escape, take refuge. No idiom is more metaphorical than slang: dévisser le coco (to unscrew the nut), to twist the neck; tortiller (to wriggle), to eat; être gerbé , to be tried; a rat , a bread thief; il lansquine , it rains, a striking, ancient figure which partly bears its date about it, which assimilates long oblique lines of rain, with the dense and slanting pikes of the lancers, and which compresses into a single word the popular expression: it rains halberds. Sometimes, in proportion as slang progresses from the first epoch to the second, words pass from the primitive and savage sense to the metaphorical sense. The devil ceases to be le rabouin , and becomes le boulanger (the baker), who