Eric Partridge, mentioned here recently, was famous for A
Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English:
Colloquialisms and Catch-phrases, Solecisms and Catachreses,
Nicknames and Vugarisms. I got the 8th ed.
(1984, updated by Paul Beale), hardcover, half price some
time ago (C$35). He was also the author of Origins, A
Dictionary of the Underworld, A Dictionary of Cliché³ and The
Gentle Art of Lexicography.
This fantastic 1400-page slang dictionary has lots of
etymology, lots of anecdotal reports on usage and lots of
rhyming slang, though not in a separate section. It's heavier
on Commonwealth than US usage. There are 25 pages worth of
special appendixes on, to give just a few examples,
Australian Underworld Terms Current in 1975, slang of various
English public schools, including Winchester (which comes up
in Le Carr駳 Our Game), a couple of different kinds of army
slang and back slang.
A short entry on Cockney speech gives as references the
following:
Julian Franklyn, The Cockney, 1953, 2nd ed. 1954 Robert
Baltrop & Jim Wolveridge, The Muvver Tongue, 1980 Jim
Wolveridge's pamphlet, He Don't Know 'A' from a Bull's Foot
[n.d.]
I've also got the very good New Dictionary of American Slang,
Robert L. Chapman, Harper & Row, 1986, which naturally
enough does not have much in the way of British, Australian,
Irish or Canadian content. I think I saw a newer edition at
someone's house.
An historical reference, and good for a laugh, is 1811
Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue: A Dictionary of Buckish
Slang, University Wit, and Pickpocket Eloquence, facsimile
ed., Northfield, IL: Digest Books, 1971.
Incidentally, none of these sources defines bird as
penis.
Colin mentioned the OED being expensive. I find the cheap
(about C$35) Concise Oxford is very good on meaning, but not
etymology. Grass is in there, for example, but not with the
grasshopper-copper connection.
On Fri, 17 May 2002,
DJ-Anonyme@webtv.net (Mark Sullivan) wrote:
>A while ago, Colin wrote:
>
>"I'm sure I'm being an old stick-in-the-mud but
modern slang (and I
>don't spend much time in prison yards either) doesn't
seem as inventive
>as classic cockney rhymning slang, of which there are
several
>fascinating dictionaries and histories."
>
>Colin, can you give any titles and/or authors? I've
long wanted to know
>more and more about rhyming slang, in
particular.
Karin
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