prison argot

The critics of that school feared they’d invented a prison argot.

cheap talk

"The cheaper the crook, the gaudier the patter."

Dashiell Hammett's detective Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon (1930)

The cheaper the critic, the gaudier the patter.

word of his own

The critic Maurice speaks of the pompatus of poetry.

[Steve Miller’s word]