Does anyone know the origin of the word "props," used to indicate praise or due regard? Or know of an online slang dictionary? My hardcopies are apparently just too out-of-date. Thanks.

the online slang dictionary says this:
(http://www.geocities.com/online_slang_dictionary/slang/p.html#top)
props n 1. praise, compliments. One usually "gives" props. Sometimes prefixed with "mad". ("I'll give Joe props for that crazy stunt.")

I guess this use was originally gleaned from the verbal meaning: to prop sth. up, i.e. to support, which of course, can also be used figuratively.

Now this is a new usage to me - I've never heard it used this side of the slop-bowl. Over here, the only slang use I know of is in the theatre, where "props" are the bits and pieces that an actor usesd on stage, other than actual furniture: glasses, bottles, candlesticks, daggers and swords, knives forks and plates - all that sort of thing.

In that context, it is an abbrev. of "stage properties."

I think that it's an abbrev. of 'propers' or 'proper respects'; as a verb, you can 'prop' someone rather than 'dis' him.

I gotz mad props for this hot-shot linguistic crackpot!

Speaking of "props" Rubarb offered Now this is a new usage to me - I've never heard it used this side of the slop-bowl.

The Atlantic isn't the only pond that one hasn't crossed, Rhuby. I've never heard it here either. Like you the only props I knew of were stage props.

Max, currently compere at the Big Bang Burger Bar, agrees with 'Barb: The Atlantic isn't the only pond that one hasn't crossed, Rhuby. I've never heard it here either. Like you the only props I knew of were stage props.

Me, neither. Except as short-hand for propellor, of course (see malaturbinism in some other thread). Nice to learn something completely new!

My OED also has it as an abbrev. for "proposition", a use I dimly remember from my youth, but I've not heard it used so for more years than a Neddy will own to.

Oh thank you, belligerentyouth, for the link!

If anyone wants to see current slang in action, visit the message boards at www.espn.com.

Quit disin' my man, peeps, and give 'em props.

Tsuwm (how do you pronounce that?), I think you have got it. Props to you.

Yo, wassup ya'll?
May I jump in on this one? What the aforementioned Slang Dictionary fails to note is that to offer props or to dis someone come from the same root. Props is widely used in hip hop culture. It is a short form of giving someone their proper respect or propers. Earliest usage I know of is from Aretha Franklin's classic Respect, where she demands her's. Dissing on the other hand is to disrespect someone. Listen to an hour of US urban radio and I guarantee you'll hear both. I've heard it used in some songs from the UK as well.

I'm down wid dat, homes. I consulted my local hip-hop expert and he done tol me what you jes said, bro Doug.

Word!

After rereading this thread I realized that tsuwm had pretty much said it all.
Miggidy miggidy mad props to you and yours, sir!

As a person who has actually used the word "props" in conversation, its kind of funny to read y'alls sometime snooty sometimes derisive responses to this post. For those of you who live in USA you should check out a radio call-in host named Jim Rome (most famous for being attacked by an NFL quarterback on TV) as the language that he and his callers use is so extremely filled with slang (props being one of their favorite) that it takes practice to understand them sometimes. He's highly syndicated and should not be too hard to find on your AM dial.

I've often found listening to American 'ghetto slang' fun, as they're always coming up with new vocab to replace over-used and over-popularised words; one outcast that springs to mind is 'whack' and of course there's ones like 'cool' and 'dope' which won't die, though you won't hear many that are 'cool' using that terminology anymore.
I have the feeling those who pioneer these usages adapt their language away from the main stream for the very reason Josie pointed out; so most will find them harder to understand.

'Only Doug' recognizes: After rereading this thread I realized that tsuwm had pretty much said it all.

'Tis true, tsuwm wields Occam's (hi, Max) Razor with a deftness nonpareil. But you, Doug, added the Aretha value. "Just a little bit..."

The Aretha value: color??
Oh, that's GREAT!
sockittome!

So many great words and phrases have come from hiphop culture recently. One you hear all the time now is "24/7" as in "keepin' it real 24/7" (thats 24 hours a day/7 days a week, for the unitiated). I'm picturing an SUV commercial on TV in my head right now.
There's also "411," as in, "I've got the 411" (information; directory assistance, geddit?). Although, that one always seemed a bit forced to me.
Any other good ones?

I often ask my brother (who is in college in downtown Boston) for urban slang updates, and I will hereby pass some of them along. A "whip" is a car (i.e. "That is a phat whip, yo!"), "blingin'" is showing off an impressive amount of jewelry (preferably platinum) (i.e. "Nelly is blingin' in his new video"), and "one" is a sign off phrase (like "goodbye"). It's short for Bob Marley (and other Rastafarians') "One Love." I'll get more next time I talk to him.

One,
Flatlander

Although, that one always seemed a bit forced to me.
Any other good ones?

to this curmudgeonly OP's ear, it all sounds a bit forced.

tsuwm:
Curmudge on, my friend!

Flat:
Another Rastafarianism that's made the jump to our shores is "seen!" for understood.

>Curmudge on...

thanks, but I think you're trying to goat me now.

I think you're trying to goat me now.

Goon, then.

tsuwm:
Hope I didn't get your goad.
If I really wanted to dog you, I could have said, "Mudge on, cur!"

After finding the scoop from my co-workers, it is still as I thought (and has been for at least 25 years). Even though most of the older folks I talk to say it is a southern term, within the context of inner city life (one that has a very specific gang orientation), "folks" are the members or affiliates of the south side of Chicago, whereas "peoples" are the members or affiliates of the west side of Chicago. I thought for a while that it may be "race" specific (and it may have been back when I first heard the terms) but it is now very (apparently worth dying for) turf specific.

My OED-CD tells me that folk are : people, race, nation, species, of a kind ... which is how I use it here as we are so diversified in our nations, cultures etc.
Whereas "people" is defined as a a body of persons composing a community , nation, ethnic group.
A fine distinction. Although I guess we could be called a body of persons composing a community !
Oh, the problems with finding the EXACT word.
Had no idea of the "gang" culture aspect.
Thanks for keeping this old fogy up-to-date!
You learn on this board which is what makes it so darn addictive.
(going off to mind her fs and ps emoticon)
wow

the Word Mavens strike again: http://www.randomhouse.com/wotd/

Tsuwm, maybe they DO watch what AWAD is doing!
I hadn't gone to this site before, and I just tried their
Beat the Dictionary game. The dict. beat me, with welkin.
Said it means vault of heaven. Never heard of it. Um--
hmm, a tiny, tiny bell just went off. Is that word by any chance in a poem?

Also--it makes sense to me that maybe the word props, and its parent, propers, might derive from proprieties.
What think you?

re: welkin
I have in in the wwftd dictionary as sky; air

I think it's in King Lear, and I had always mentally scanned it as virtually synonymous with 'world' - now I shall have to LIU!

(edit in) No, I think I must be misremembering the context, tsuwm:

“WELKIN: the sky”

http://shakespeare.about.com/arts/shakespeare/library/blglossW.htm

welkin
If my rapidly disappearing memory serves me aright, I believe Huck Finn had some concerns about the welkin. Had to do with the Duke's use of language?

After breakfast Tom learned me and Jim how to steer, and divided us all up into four-hour watches, turn and turn about; and when his watch was out I took his place, and he got out the professor's papers and pens and wrote a letter home to his aunt Polly, telling her everything that had happened to us, and dated it "IN THE WELKIN, APPROACHING ENGLAND," and folded it together and stuck it fast with a red wafer, and directed it, and wrote above the direction, in big writing, "FROM TOM SAWYER, THE ERRONORT," and said it would stump old Nat Parsons, the postmaster, when it come along in the mail. I says:

"Tom Sawyer, this ain't no welkin, it's a balloon."

"Well, now, who SAID it was a welkin, smarty?"

"You've wrote it on the letter, anyway."

"What of it? That don't mean that the balloon's the welkin."

"Oh, I thought it did. Well, then, what is a welkin?"

I see in a minute he was stuck. He raked and scraped around in his mind, but he couldn't find nothing, so he had to say:

"I don't know, and nobody don't know. It's just a word, and it's a mighty good word, too. There ain't many that lays over it. I don't believe there's ANY that does."

"Shucks!" I says. "But what does it MEAN? -- that's the p'int. "

"I don't know what it means, I tell you. It's a word that people uses for -- for -- well, it's ornamental. They don't put ruffles on a shirt to keep a person warm, do they?"

"Course they don't."

"But they put them ON, don't they?"

"Yes."

"All right, then; that letter I wrote is a shirt, and the welkin's the ruffle on it."

I judged that that would gravel Jim, and it did.

"Now, Mars Tom, it ain't no use to talk like dat; en, moreover, it's sinful. You knows a letter ain't no shirt, en dey ain't no ruffles on it, nuther. Dey ain't no place to put 'em on; you can't put em on, and dey wouldn't stay ef you did."

"Oh DO shut up, and wait till something's started that you know something about."

"Why, Mars Tom, sholy you can't mean to say I don't know about shirts, when, goodness knows, I's toted home de washin' ever sence --"

"I tell you, this hasn't got anything to do with shirts. I only --"

"Why, Mars Tom, you said yo'self dat a letter --"

"Do you want to drive me crazy? Keep still. I only used it as a metaphor."

That word kinder bricked us up for a minute. Then Jim says -- rather timid, because he see Tom was getting pretty tetchy:

"Mars Tom, what is a metaphor?"

"A metaphor's a -- well, it's a -- a -- a metaphor's an illustration." He see THAT didn't git home, so he tried again. "When I say birds of a feather flocks together, it's a metaphorical way of saying --"

"But dey DON'T, Mars Tom. No, sir, 'deed dey don't. Dey ain't no feathers dat's more alike den a bluebird en a jaybird, but ef you waits till you catches dem birds together, you'll --"

"Oh, give us a rest! You can't get the simplest little thing through your thick skull. Now don't bother me any more."

Jim was satisfied to stop. He was dreadful pleased with himself for catching Tom out. The minute Tom begun to talk about birds I judged he was a goner, because Jim knowed more about birds than both of us put together. You see, he had killed hundreds and hundreds of them, and that's the way to find out about birds. That's the way people does that writes books about birds, and loves them so that they'll go hungry and tired and take any amount of trouble to find a new bird and kill it. Their name is ornithologers, and I could have been an ornithologer myself, because I always loved birds and creatures; and I started out to learn how to be one, and I see a bird setting on a limb of a high tree, singing with its head tilted back and its mouth open, and before I thought I fired, and his song stopped and he fell straight down from the limb, all limp like a rag, and I run and picked him up and he was dead, and his body was warm in my hand, and his head rolled about this way and that, like his neck was broke, and there was a little white skin over his eyes, and one little drop of blood on the side of his head; and, laws! I couldn't see nothing more for the tears; and I hain't never murdered no creature since that warn't doing me no harm, and I ain't going to.

But I was aggravated about that welkin. I wanted to know. I got the subject up again, and then Tom explained, the best he could. He said when a person made a big speech the newspapers said the shouts of the people made the welkin ring. He said they always said that, but none of them ever told what it was, so he allowed it just meant outdoors and up high. Well, that seemed sensible enough, so I was satisfied, and said so. That pleased Tom and put him in a good humor again, and he says:

"Well, it's all right, then; and we'll let bygones be bygones. I don't know for certain what a welkin is, but when we land in London we'll make it ring, anyway, and don't you forget it."

[Tom Sawyer Abroad, by Mark Twain]

and speaking of 'twain' and 'welkin'...

Of that house A. Horne is lord. Seventy beds keeps he there teeming mothers are wont that they lie for to thole and bring forth bairns hale so God's angel to Mary quoth. Watchers they there walk, white sisters in ward sleepless. Smarts they still sickness soothing: in twelve moons thrice an hundred. Truest bedthanes they twain are, for Horne holding wariest ward.

In ward wary the watcher hearing come that man mild-hearted eft rising with swire ywimpled to him her gate wide undid. Lo, levin leaping lightens in eyeblink Ireland's westward welkin!

[Ulysses, by James Joyce]