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Any group of people who share the same values and lifestyle will evolve a unique vocabulary that outsiders don’t understand.

For example, a lumberjack arriving at a northern Wisconsin hospital a century ago supposedly explained his injuries to the nurse this way:

“The ground loader threw the beads around a pine log. He claimed he had called for a Saint Croix but he gave a Saginaw; she gunned, broke three of my slats and one of my stilts and also a very fine skid.” The nurse said, “I don’t understand,” to which he replied, “I don’t either. He must have been yaps.”

Translation: The worker in charge of lifting logs onto a sled fixed a chain around a pine trunk. He said he asked for the wide end to be raised first, but the loader raised the narrow end. Rather than rolling up onto the sled, the log swung endways and hit the narrator, breaking three ribs and a leg and interrupting the work. The narrator concludes that the loader must have been crazy (‘yaps’).

Lumberjacks showed similar linguistic creativity in their nicknames.