Age of Slang, Idea and Design

A couple years ago, my friend Don and I had an idea while spending way too long debating the origin of a piece of slang.

The idea:
A crowd-sourced slang dictionary that would let you browse your way back through the history of language’s oddities, define terms, and otherwise waste away a workday. Think Urban Dictionary, but for word-nerds. Here’s my designs of how it would work (click images to see full-size).

This would be the screen you would see at the site, which would be called “Age of Slang” or perhaps “Slang Ages”. The latter of which lends itself to being said as “Slangages”. Give it a try, it’s fun to say. Worth noting on this view are the ability to skip between words (of a similar type? age of creation? letter? who knows), and the ability to add words before and after the word you’re examining.

This is the screen that shows one parent. The phrase “Word” perhaps came from “I Concur”, noting agreement. That’s probably wrong, but it’s just to illustrate the design.

Here I’ve added some interface features:

• View date of “creation”
• Close word (eliminates from view if the “stack” gets too high)
• View descendant/ancestor (not “child” or “parent” which was deemed to be too, well, child-like…)
• Add descendant/ancestor

Hopefully you can see now how this might work out.

If you click the word (it’s underlined, so it’s got to be a link, right?), you get to see the definition.

And here’s what it would look like if you wanted to add a slang word or phrase. Note the somewhat “angry hipster” instructions.

And here’s the second screen, if you wanted to take credit for your addition to the database.

And I even went so far as to create a footer, with search and a dedicated “add phrase” button.

And explained the joke about “Web Two-Point-Greg”, which Don and I came up with after being annoyed over people saying “Web 2.0” too frequently. Probably a little too far.

So hey, digital friend! Want to help me out? Care to help build this thing, or at least help me make it real? I think it’s something that the world should have. Urban Dictionary is hardly the proper repository for the world’s slang.

May I offer another post?

• December 9, 2008 — The Interwebs Presentation (15)
• November 4, 2008 — Design Features I Like: Large Search Boxes (6)
• September 22, 2008 — 3 reasons why I dig the new Flickr (1)