| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language: Fourth Edition. 2000. |
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| igg |
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| PRONUNCIATION: |   g |
| TRANSITIVE VERB: | Inflected forms: igged, igg·ing, iggs
Slang To ignore or snub. | | NOUN: | A snub or rebuff. | | OUR LIVING LANGUAGE: | Igg, a shortened form of ignore, seems to have come into American speech from jive, the special jargon of Black jazz musicians in the 1930s. Its use has since spread beyond musicians into African-American communities throughout the United States. The reduction of a word to its initial syllable is a common source of slang or informal words, especially among groups of speakers who for reasons of exclusivity like to remain avant-garde in their speech. Often such words come into general use, as in mike for microphone.
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| The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition. Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by the Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved. |
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