The American Slang Dictionary from 1890

The United States, when it borrowed the language of the Mother Country, adopted also many of its colloquialisms and many more of its provincialisms. Ours is the tongue that Shakespeare spoke, and our inheritance includes much of the heterodox philology of our British cousins. Especially with respect to sporting and theatrical slang, and to the language common to the thief and the thief catcher and known as "Thieves' patter," the majority of words, and phrases are as often used in one country as in the other.