(n.) A secret language or conventional slang peculiar to thieves, tramps, and vagabonds; flash.
Example Sentences:
(1) Expert view A sneaky, bar-room blow When Alexander Lebedev said he "neutralised" a man by punching him in the face on Russian television, he echoed the dark argot of the KGB, the agency of which he was a member long before spending a slice of his fortune on the Independent and the Evening Standard.
(2) Meanwhile their two sons were trying out their own trash-talking skills in this rather bizarre green screen face off (presumably allowing chroma key footage of dinosaurs and car chases to be added in later): Facebook Twitter Pinterest Share Share this post Facebook Twitter Pinterest close Though by the time Mayweather had endured that final bout of dad-dancing at the press conference, even the man who lives for showmanship seemed to have lost his appetite for it: Facebook Twitter Pinterest Share Share this post Facebook Twitter Pinterest close 3.38am BST Kevin is back All those knockdowns in the last fight were probably rather avoidable, as Kevin is quick to point out in his latest missive: The referee in the junior-feather (super-bantam in our argot) fight between Leo Santa Cruz from LA and the old Venezuelan Alexander Munoz was one Vic Drakulich.
(3) If you "blow up", to use the argot of the City, your anticipated bonus will not be paid, or it will be much reduced.
(4) It relates the battle of Waterloo and its themes of chance and destiny to the sewers through which Valjean wanders after he has left the barricades; and it links the sewers to the underground slang, the argot, which Hugo delights to record in his prose.
(5) It is hard for me with my Vietnam experience to talk with these recent warriors – the argot, the slang, of war has changed .
(6) But the Mills and Boon argot took on a decidedly less courtly colour overnight, as speculation mounted about the possibility that Clegg might spurn the Tories after all (see – it's hard not to) and return to Labour's close embrace (sorry).
(7) The quickest and most dramatic way to achieve this was by taking an over-familiar garment and, in the argot of the age, "subverting" it.
(8) And, in the dismal argot of the modern British bureaucrat, he has a transferable skill-set which has been put to good use in a rural community.
(9) When Alexander Lebedev said he "neutralised" a man by punching him in the face on Russian television, he echoed the dark argot of the KGB, the agency of which he was a member long before spending a slice of his fortune on the Independent and the Evening Standard.
(10) In the technical argot of economics, this is known as counting your chickens before they are hatched.
(11) Everyone makes a dull record occasionally.” As the 80s went on, so Smash Hits became bolder, eventually inventing its own argot, affectionately mocking the hyperbolic language of pop.
(12) In the dismal argot of the American high street, Salmond has made the SNP the go-to party for Scots on the democratic left.
(13) In the argot of the beat, the figures were "cuffed, skewed, nodded and stitched".
(14) If we appear more critical of the government than of the opposition, it is only because we believe that - excuse cricketing argot - there is no point in bowling to the fielding side.
(15) MK possesses its own argot: suburbs are “gridsquares”, cycle paths are “redways”, vertical and horizontal roads are known as V8 or H3, and the centre is CMK.
(16) "Most people will say it can't be fair for people who have no right to be here in the UK to continue to exist as everybody else does," May said last week, and that was that: to use the argot of the last Tory campaign Crosby masterminded, she's thinking what they're thinking, which is all that matters.
(17) Nothing escapes Hugo's omnivorous collage, not the argot of the criminal underworld, nor songs in dialect, nor the scraps of paper scribbled with revolutionary notes which Hugo loves quoting - incomprehensible fragments, like imported nonsense poems.
Prattle
Definition:
(v. i.) To talk much and idly; to prate; hence, to talk lightly and artlessly, like a child; to utter child's talk.
(v. t.) To utter as prattle; to babble; as, to prattle treason.
(n.) Trifling or childish tattle; empty talk; loquacity on trivial subjects; prate; babble.
Example Sentences:
(1) The talk coming from senior Tories – at least some of whom have the grace to squirm when questioned on this topic – suggesting that it's all terribly complicated, that it was a long time ago and that even SS members were, in some ways, themselves victims, is uncomfortably close to the kind of prattle we used to hear from those we called Holocaust revisionists.
(2) An immensely cerebral man, who trained himself to need only six hours of sleep - believing that a woman should have seven and only a fool eight - Mishcon was not a man given to small talk, nor one who would tolerate prattle for the sake of it.
(3) Comparisons between present-day China and the soulless, dreary totalitarian socialist state immortalised in Orwell's masterpiece are difficult to sustain after seeing clutch after clutch of Chinese teenagers, dressed in the latest quasi-Japanophile fashion, walk down a mobbed Beijing pedestrian shopping arcade nibbling at bouquets of candy floss and prattling on as if the phrase "commodity fetishism" had never crossed their young lips.
(4) The opening prattle this week is all about the seven deadly sins.
(5) I think they're about to escort me from the building for prattling on in an unGuardian manner.
(6) Melancholia itself would have been talking point enough without Von Trier's prattling.
(7) These days depression is the stuff of postprandial dinner-party prattle, but Plath explored the condition with no sense of its being a "condition" that others shared, no established therapeutic vocabulary, and no Prozac.
(8) The South Americans have played 25 games, and are guaranteed to play two more including tomorrow's match • Three of Diego Forlán's four goals in World Cup finals history have come from outside the box 7:10pm: As ITV's panel prattling on about how surprising it is to see harmony in the Dutch camp - exagerrating the divisions of the past and reinforcing the view that English society remains stubbornly anti-intellectual (and anti-male knitting), afraid of anyone who does not fear to speak his mind - let's see what's happening in Uruguay.
(9) Anyway, I won't prattle on for there is more live action to be found: San Jose Earthquakes vs LA Galaxy is about to kick off.
(10) Or it could be that the Sun loves me when I'm a prattling, giggling, Essex boy "Shagger of the Year", when I'm in my proper place, beneath vacuous headlines, herding their flock towards dumb lingo and crap bingo, when I'm being cheeky on MTV or even unwisely invading answerphones, in a way that many would argue, is less offensive than the manner that they are alleged to have done.
(11) Inexperienced MPs who prattle on about deeper UK involvement in Syria don’t yet grasp how merely symbolic much of it is nowadays.
(12) When I hear him prattle on inanely I can imagine how Neil Lennon felt when the Geordie dullard kicked him in the head."
(13) 2.30pm BST If you'd like to see me, Ian Prior, Barry Glendenning and Owen Gibson prattling on in front of a camera about Sir Alex Ferguson's retirement, then you're in luck!
(14) The forced cheerfulness of Nicholson's earlier scenes with the hotel manager are a sharp contrast to the sense of anger and tension as he drives and listens to his wife and son prattle on.