1. argot n. the jargon of a group or class, formerly especially of criminals Canadian Oxford English dictionary
2. argot noun – (plural argots)
- A secret language or conventional slang peculiar to thieves, tramps, and vagabonds.
- The specialized informal vocabulary and terminology used between people with special skill in a field, such as between doctors, mathematicians or hackers; a jargon.
Example: The conversation was in the argot of the trade, full of acronyms and abbreviations that made no sense to the uninitiated.
Synonyms
- (secret language): cant, jargon, slang
- (specialized vocabulary): jargon Wiktionary
The recurring themes that I see are:
- secrecy [need to conceal from others],
- language at the service of self-interest,
- degree of criminality although not necessarily (ie. see list of drug world argot, prison argot, Prostitution-related jargon),
- words with multiple meanings (to insider versus outsider, uninitiated),
- enables credentialing for evaluating new potential ingroup members, and
- allows connecting and linking diverse user groups, networks and markets, all around the world.
Franchising argot is a communication system widely understood among Big Franchising’s participants, yet it is largely hidden from mainstream culture. A necessary prerequisite to support modern franchising as a confidence game.
There is a need for a language resource to translate franchising words into plain English. I have started by defining terms and collecting examples of industry behavior in the Information Sharing Project.
- My next contribution will be to write a dictionary of franchise terms.
A book similar to Fowler’s Modern English Usage: a style guide to explain mom-and-pop franchise investing. A doubter’s dictionary.
