lang into that of colloquialism.

The word _bamboozle_ is still almost slang, though perhaps more common
than it was two hundred years ago, when Swift attacked it. Even now we
do not know where it came from. There was a slang word used at the
time but now forgotten--_bam_, which meant a trick or practical joke;
and some scholars have thought that _bamboozle_ (which, of course,
means "to deceive") came from this. On the other hand, it may have
been the other way about, and that the shorter word came from the
longer. The word _bamboozle_ shows us how hard it is for meaningless
slang to become good English even after a struggle of two hundred
years.

We have seen how many slang words in English have become good English,
so that people use with propriety expressions that would have seemed
improper or vulgar fifty or ten or even five years ago. Other
interesting words are some which are perfectly good English as now
used, but which have been borrowed from other languages, and in those
languages are or were mere slang. The word _bizarre_, which we
borrowed from the French, and which means "curious," in a fantastic or
half-savage way, is a perfectly dignified word in English; but it must
have been a slang word at one time in French. It meant long ago in
French "soldierly," and literally "bearded"--that is, if it came from
the Spanish word _bizarra_, "beard."

Another word which we use in English has a much less dignified use in
French. We can speak of the _calibre_ of a person, meaning the quality
of his character or intellect; but in French the word _calibre_ is
only in ordinary speech applied to things. To speak of a "person of a
certain calibre" in French is very bad slang indeed.

Again, the word _fiasco_, which we borrowed from the Italian, and
which means the complete failure of something from which we had hoped
much, was at first slang in Italian. It was applied especially to the
failure of a play in a theatre. To break down was _far fiasco_, which
literally means "make a bottle." The phrase does not seem to have any
very clear meaning, but at any rate it is far removed from the
dignified word _fiasco_ as used in English.

The word _sack_ as used in describing the sack of a town in war is a
picturesque and even poetic word; but as it comes from the French
_sac_, meaning "pack" or "plunder," it is really a kind of slang.

On the other hand, words which belong to quite good and ordinary
speech in their own language