Collectors & Items Collected

Claire Azar: Blobby, Shmob, Fracket, Lines, Tails, Droco, Flitz, Class Year (’22, ’23, etc.), Trippees, Drillees

Dylan Bienstock: FFB, Flair, Sklodge

Harry Grigorian: Warm Cut, Dark Side/ Light Side, Colly P

Annie Revers: 3FB, Foco, Lou’s Challenge, Ledyard Challenge

Nathan Zhang: Blitz, BEMA, Bequest

Collin Kearns: Facetimey, Layup, The Fifty

Ben Ryan: NARP, Need, Good Sam

What are we collecting?

For our folklore collection project, we decided to investigate slang at Dartmouth. Whether it is acronyms for locations on campus or creative ways to refer to students or emails, Dartmouth students have a unique vocabulary. Slang is a pervasive part of campus culture and something students depend upon during their time here. Since slang is such an important part of daily life at Dartmouth, our group decided to take a poll of our friends, family members, teammates, and strangers in order to gain a better understanding of Dartmouth slang. While our informants come from diverse backgrounds and experiences, all are united by one common attribute: being past or present Dartmouth students.

What is the significance?

• This project is significant because it offers an analysis of slang used by the Dartmouth community to signal belonging to a group. If you are not familiar with these terms it can become fairly obvious that you are not part of the Dartmouth community. This is why so many of these words are learned freshman year as the new class is assimilating to Dartmouth’s culture.
• Slang allows us to easily communicate with one another and create a shared language 
• This shared language: 
  • Allows students to connect members of their community (current students, professors, and alumni)
  • Provides Freshman an easier transition into Dartmouth by allowing them to feel quickly connected and a part of the community
• This shared language is vital to everyday communication on Dartmouth campus and thus students often feel forced to participate in this shared experience or often feel left out if they are not aware of the culture terms

Questions we asked:

• What is a phrase of Dartmouth slang that you have picked up?

• Where/when do you think you first learned it?

• What group knows/uses this word (a club? all of Dartmouth? members of a sports team?)?

• Why do you think this slang came to be? Is it a shortened phrase, a description of a place, or something else?

• Can you tell me anything else interesting about this slang?

Informants:

We collected from 23 informants for this project. To ensure that our sample of informants would help us achieve our goal of digging deeper into the origins and meanings of Dartmouth Slang, we chose students and alumni who we thought would be extremely involved on Dartmouth’s campus. We chose students from many different backgrounds and interest groups, so that we could get a variety of perspectives on Dartmouth Slang. Though, one thing that units all of our informants is that they were all once part of the folk group of Dartmouth students, and therefore are very acquainted with Dartmouth slang.

Informant Demographics:

Overall observations from our collections:

• Majority of terms were learned by people during their freshman year
• Certain words are almost always learned on Trips, making trips serve as something of a facilitator for the language. 
  • Words like trippees obviously, but also basic words like layup or foco that are essential to becoming a Dartmouth student
• Majority of other words are learned as students are exposed to new social situations
  • Biggest steps would be picking classes, going to the library, beginning to “go out”, and the frat ban ending
  • Words are learned in specific situations
    • For example, going to the library means you will learn FFB, while beginning to go to fraternities means you will learn words like lines and fracket