argot ˈär-(ˌ)gō , -gət noun
: a characteristic language of a particular group
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The word argot has appeared in 10 articles on NYTimes.com in the past year, including on July 8 in the book review “In Charlie Kaufman’s Novel, a Comic Hero Is Haunted by a Lost Film” by Matthew Specktor:
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: A man writes a novel, a very long novel full of recondite information and pop-cultural jokes, references spanning from Shakespeare to Hegelian philosophy to contemporary TV, and a plot that involves both omnipresent corporate sponsorship and the pursuit of a film of mysterious power, which exists only as a single copy.
This too-broad summation could describe “Infinite Jest” as easily as it does Charlie Kaufman’s debut novel, “Antkind” — but you only have to pierce the veil on “Antkind” to discern radical differences. After a brief preamble about a gelatinous sea monster, written in a faux 19th-century argot, we are hurled into the mind of one B. Rosenberg, a film critic driving through the Florida darkness, on the way from New York City to St. Augustine to research a book on gender and cinema…
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