I m not sure the OED is particularly helpful here as it is very slow moving and often imprecise being more concerned from what I can tell with describing casual usage than precision usage and yes I do have it micro print edition I d love to have the full size version but I don t have that kind of money laying around Heh Anyway I do get your point that there is overlap in genera parlance From the OED perspective there isn t any difference at all between these words other than jargon never refers to slang I think a lot of people would have problems with these definitions Anyway to get back to your real point if these terms are used more interchangeably in the UK than they are in the US there is no harm at all in making them more specific accurate to Yankee virtual ears since there won t be any effect at all on British ones if you see what I mean I think this is especially true in the case of that article because most of the terms are jargon rather than slang some are of course slangish action velcro etc but they re in the minority And it s not that the OED based usage of argot patois lingo would be wrong from an OED based perspective simply vague the meaning of all three words in the the OED is basically slang or jargon Anyway glad we re not really arguing Heh talk contrib