Was Sylvia Plath an early adopter of the adjective “basic” as an insult? It’s a theory which is put to us by the Telegraph, courtesy of the writer Alana Massey’s discovery earlier this month that “holy shit you guys, Sylvia Plath has been calling people basic since 1950. Pioneer bitch!”

Massey had been reading Plath’s unabridged journals when she came across the phrase. Recounting the details of a blind date in the second person – “you meet Bill in the car. It’s his convertible. You get a side glance as he drives: not bad – hair receding on temples, but manly” – the section sees Plath at a fraternity house, where “a fire is going, and the rugs and pine-panels are cosily collegiate … [but] you’ve had all you can take of good-looking vacuums and shallow socialites. So you try to be basic. You are such a basic character yourself, anyway.”

I’m not convinced Plath is using “basic” in the same way as Kate Moss’s “basic bitch” comment, here, “as an adjective used to describe any person, place, activity involving obscenely obvious behaviour, dress, action”. Her “basic” interactions with her date, after all, see her getting “lost in his eyes” and “loving him for sharing a little of what matters with you”.

But it does remind me of how much fun it is to trace contemporary slang’s sometimes-ancient roots. Here are a few of my favourites.

Hang out
I’m 36 – I don’t use “basic” as an insult. But I do say hang out, and how delightful is it to learn, thanks to this great Flavorwire piece, that it dates back to 1811. How even more delightful to find it here, in a letter by John Keats:

“I … am getting initiated into a little Cant,” writes the poet to his brothers in 1818. “They call drinking, ‘deep-dying scarlet’, and when you breathe in you’re ‘watering’ … They call good Wine a ‘pretty tipple’, and call getting a Child ‘knocking out an apple’. Stopping at a Tavern they call ‘hanging out’. Where do you sup? is ‘where do you hang out?’”

OMG
The first recorded use of the ubiquitous exclamation dates to a 1917 letter from Lord Fisher to Winston Churchill. Fisher, who is nothing if not fond of exclamation marks, writes: “I hear that a new order of Knighthood is on the tapis – O.M.G. (Oh! My God!) - Shower it on the Admiralty!!”

Do, as in have sex with
There are absolutely tons of excellent examples on this fascinating Metafilter thread, but I can’t resist this one from Titus Andronicus. “Villain, what hast thou done?” asks Demetrius. “That which thou canst not undo,” Aaron, who is sleeping with his mother Tamora, queen of the Goths, tells him. “Thou has undone our mother,” says Chiron. “Villain, I have done thy mother,” Aaron responds. Yo mama, Shakespeare style.

Puke
And while we’re on Shakespeare, how about puke, a word that, with two small children, I use relatively frequently? “First recorded in the “Seven Ages of Man” speech” in As You Like It, says the Online Etymology Dictionary:
“All the world’s a stage,
And all the men and women merely players:
They have their exits and their entrances;
And one man in his time plays many parts,
His acts being seven ages. At first the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms,” Jacques tells us.

Take a read of Flavorwire to find out when fly, legit, beef and cool were first used - all way earlier than I would have thought. And let me know about any of your own favourites. I, meanwhile, am planning to stop saying “hang out”, and start saying “sup”, in honour of Keats and because I think it’d be pretty fly. Who’s with me?