words and expressions that are used by small groups of people and that are not easily understood by other people:
Meaning of argot in English
(Definition of argot from the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary & Thesaurus © Cambridge University Press)
Examples of argot
argot
The term was used in gambling argot to refer to a gambler.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Matthews (1887, 94f) writes that, once this trade had been outlawed, traffic was conducted in an argot in which gems were referred to as 'calves'.
From the Cambridge English Corpus
Lodge records "an enduring literary convention which made argot an indispensable component in any portrayal not only of the criminal fraternity, but of workingclass males in general" (247).
From the Cambridge English Corpus
I will make sure that the services avoid the use of argot.
We are talking about a term which is common argot within the legal trade.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
However, it seems to me that that is different from what might be called, in the argot, a "sting" operation because they vary infinitely.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
But that argument is the argot of the thieves' kitchen.
From the
Hansard archive
Example from the Hansard archive. Contains Parliamentary information licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0
Hecht, in particular, was wonderful with slang, and he peppered his films with the argot of the streets.
But the film's ham-handed reliance on period argot not only wears thin; it keeps the characters, such as they are, at a chilly distance.
Some speak a dialect or argot of their own, while others speak the prevailing dialect or language.
For instance the "archissupots" were meant to be former students in charge of teaching the local slang ("argot") to the new recruits.
The novel is written with literary language with elements of argot and slang of drug addicts.
But such complete secret languages are rare, because the speakers usually have some public language in common, on which the argot is largely based.
In this way, jargon can be argot and can provide an ingroup with shibboleths.
Images must be cut, dialogue overdubbed or deleted, and explicit messages and subtle implications excised from what the argot of film criticism calls the diegesis.
These examples are from corpora and from sources on the web. Any opinions in the examples do not represent the opinion of the Cambridge Dictionary editors or of Cambridge University Press or its licensors.
