A meaningless conventionality […] has also its special uses, as in the forms of social intercourse, where we are sometimes called upon to disguise instead of disclosing our thoughts by speech.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.113

It [slang] seeks relief from the often oppressive conventionality, even insipidity, of words worn out by the use of persons who have put neither knowledge nor feeling into them, and which seem incapable of expressing anything that is real.
- Whitney (1875), a pag.113