foreign words when English would do as well. Conradi says "the age varies from
twelve to eighteen, most being fourteen to sixteen." Some indulge this tendency
in letters, and would like to do so in conversation, but fear ridicule. Fifty-six per
cent reported cases of superfine elegance or affected primness or precision in the
use of words. Some had spells of effort in this direction, some belabor
compositions to get a style that suits them, some memorise fine passages to this
end, or modulate their voices to aid them, affect elegance with a chosen mate by
agreement soliloquize before a glass with poses. According to his curve this
tendency culminates at fourteen.
Adjectivism, adverbism, and nounism, or marked disposition to multiply one or
more of the above classes of words, and in the above order, also occur near the
early teens. Adjectives are often used as adverbial prefixes to other adjectives,
and here favorite words are marked. Nearly half of Conradi's reports show it, but
the list of words so used is small.
[Illustration: Graph showing Slang, Reading Craze, and Precision by
Age.]
Miss Williams presents on interesting curve of slang confessed as being both
attractive and used by 226 out of 251. From this it appears that early adolescence
is the curve of greatest pleasure in its use, fourteen being the culminating year.
There is very little until eleven, when the curve for girls rises very rapidly, to fall
nearly us rapidly from fifteen to seventeen. Ninety-three out of 104 who used it
did so despite criticism.
Conradi, who collected and prints a long list of current slang words and phrases,
found that of 295 young boys and girls not one failed to confess their use, and
eighty-five per cent of all gave the age at which they thought it most common.
On this basis he constructs the above curve, comparing with this the curve of a
craze for reading and for precision in speech.
The reasons given are, in order of frequency, that slang was more emphatic,
more exact, more concise, convenient, sounded pretty, relieved formality, was
natural, manly, appropriate, etc. Only a very few thought it was vulgar, limited
the vocabulary, led to or was a substitute for swearing, destroyed exactness, etc.
This writer attempts a provisional classification of slang expressions under the
suggestive heads of rebukes to pride, boasting and loquacity, hypocrisy, quaint
and emphatic negatives, exaggerations, exclamations, mild oaths, attending to