http://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2009/06/08/Prisoners-resurrect-500-year-old-slang/UPI-60481244489259/
"ROCHDALE, England, June 8 (UPI) -- The British Ministry of Justice is warning the country's prisons that prisoners have taken to using a 16th-century slang to hide talk about drug deals.
The 500-year-old dialect, which is known as thieves' cant or rogues' cant, was believed to have been developed by medieval gypsies and adopted by a handful of scoundrels across England."
...
""This is the most ingenious use of a secret code we have ever come across," an official at the 381-prisoner facility said. "Elizabethan cant was only used by a tiny number of people and it is quite amazing that is has been resurrected in order to buy drugs. Some inmates will try anything to get contraband into jail."
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http://www.zuckermann.org/pdf/icelandicPSM.pdf
D: what is old is new again.
Icelanders are so conservative with their vocabulary that they can still read the ancient sagas.
They just find new meanings for old words.
For example, "simi" means thread or rope. Now it also means telephone.
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