argot

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noun ar·got \ ˈär-gət , -(ˌ)gō \

Definition of argot

:the language used by a particular type or group of people :an often more or less secret vocabulary and idiom peculiar to a particular group

He has been bombarded by thousands of scathing messages—known as being "flamed" in the argot of cyberspace.
—Peter H. Lewis

See argot defined for English-language learners

See argot defined for kids

argot was our Word of the Day on 05/16/2012. Hear the podcast!

Examples of argot in a Sentence

groups communicating in their own secret argots
used the argot of figure skaters

Recent Examples of argot from the Web

During her time at Breitbart, McHugh consistently made racially charged statements on her Twitter feed and used the argot of the alt-right twittersphere.

— rosie gray, The Atlantic, "Why Breitbart Fired an Editor for a Tweet," 7 June 2017
Leaders of the Democratic Party, eagerly chasing these semantic developments, have taken up the new argot, too.

— philip kennicott, The Denver Post, "Why does the Trump “resistance” use such crude and profane language?," 24 May 2017
This resulted in little Solomon acquiring an Aussie accent that required him to take special classes and lost the argot when the family moved back to the USA and the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

— mark purdy, The Mercury News, "Purdy: Here’s why 49ers GM Lynch decided on Thomas over Trubisky–and it was an easy call," 27 Apr. 2017
Mrs. Trump, a former model, who impressed the designer with her command of fashion argot, had her own ideas.

— ruth la ferla, New York Times, "The Man Who Dressed Melania Trump for the Ball," 25 Jan. 2017
That means the companies must translate the demanding argot of genetics — alleles and phenotypes and centromeres — into something approachable, even simple, for physicians and laypersons alike.

— thomas goetz, WIRED, "23AndMe Will Decode Your DNA for $1,000. Welcome to the Age of Genomics," 17 Nov. 2007

These example sentences are selected automatically from various online news sources to reflect current usage of the word 'argot.' Views expressed in the examples do not represent the opinion of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback.

Did You Know?

We borrowed argot from French in the mid-1800s, although our language already had several words covering its meaning. There was jargon, which harks back to Anglo-French by way of Middle English (where it meant "twittering of birds"); it had been used for specialized (and often obscure or pretentious) vocabulary since the 1600s. There was also lingo, which had been around for almost a hundred years, and which is connected to the Latin word lingua ("language"). English novelist and lawyer Henry Fielding used it of "court gibberish" - what we tend to call legalese. In fact, the suffixal ending -ese is a newer means of indicating arcane vocabulary. One of its very first applications at the turn of the 20th century was for "American 'golfese.'"