Biography

London slang is not one thing but several, layered across centuries of immigration, cultural exchange, and the specific linguistic creativity of communities that need to communicate within themselves while maintaining opacity to outsiders. The London that produced Cockney rhyming slang in the nineteenth century and Multicultural London English in the late twentieth century is the same London – a city that has always absorbed new populations and been changed by them, including linguistically.

Multicultural London English: The Current Standard
Multicultural London English (MLE) is the variety of English that emerged in London from the 1980s onwards, shaped by the linguistic contributions of communities from the Caribbean, West Africa, South Asia, and their British-born descendants. It is now the dominant informal spoken variety among young Londoners of all backgrounds, having spread from its origins in inner-city communities to become a general London youth register. UCL’s MLE research group has documented the variety’s emergence and spread comprehensively. What is striking about MLE is the speed of its adoption across ethnic and social boundaries: it is now used by young people from backgrounds with no connection to the communities that originated it, which is how linguistic change has always worked but rarely with this visibility and this speed.

The Core MLE Vocabulary
Bare: very, extremely (bare cold, bare hungry). Mandem: a group of friends, primarily male. Ting: thing, but also a person, but also a situation – one of MLE’s most flexible general-purpose nouns. Peng: attractive, excellent, desirable. Wasteman: a person of no value or reliability. Roadman: a person whose lifestyle is associated with street culture. Buff: attractive. Link: to meet or to be in a romantic relationship with. Peak: unfortunate, bad, excessive. Wicked: excellent (borrowed from Jamaican English and thoroughly integrated). Allow it: let it go, stop doing that, I refuse. Bruv: brother, used as a general form of address between friends. Fam: family, used similarly.

The Older London Vocabulary: What Persists
Blinding: excellent, outstanding. Used in the same register as brilliant but with a specifically London flavour. Sorted: arranged, completed, satisfactory. Minted: wealthy. Gutted: extremely disappointed. Proper: genuinely, thoroughly (proper good, proper bad). Geezer: a man, usually with a connotation of a certain kind of old-school London masculinity. Dodgy: suspicious, unreliable, of questionable quality. Blag: to obtain something through charm or deception, or to talk one’s way into or out of a situation. Bloke: man, the standard London term. Sound: good, reliable, trustworthy (he’s sound means he is a reliable person, not that he produces acoustic output). Cambridge Dictionary documents many of these terms with their regional attributions. https://prat.uk/london-slang-words/