La búsqueda etimológica en el argot de los delincuentes

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to offer a sketch of the different problems that faces the etymological search in a sociolect as the slang or thieves' cant, characterized by the lack of data, texts and documents, its orality, the rapid evolution —besides the tendency to archaism— and the great diversity of variants of a word. In order to do that, we analyse five terms (jicho, boqueras, tralla, butrón and bujarrón), that correspond to the multifunctional nature of this slang and his three forms of lexical creation: semantic and formal transformation and borrowings from other languages or slangs.