The Stories of Slang
Like the flesh-and-blood humans whose uncensored emotions it represents, slang's obsessions are sex, the body and its functions, and intoxication: drink and drugs. Slang does not do kind. It's about hatreds - both intimate and and national - about the insults that follow on, the sneers and the put-downs. Caring, sharing and compassion? Not at this address. There are over 10,000 terms focusing on sex, but love? Not one.Jonathon Green, aka 'Mr Slang', has drawn on the 600,000-plus citations that make up his magisterial Green's Dictionary of Slang (published 2010, now online at www.greensdictofslang.com) to tell some of slang's most entertaining stories. Categories range from The Body to Pulp Diction, via multi-cultural London English and pun-tastic gems.Mostly gazing up from the gutter, slang, perhaps surprisingly, also embraces the stars. These stories may look at drunken sailors, dubious doctors, and a shelf of dangerously potent cocktails, but slang does class acts as well. None more so than Shakespeare. Devotee of the double entendre, master of the pun, first to put nearly 300 slang terms in print.
JONATHON GREEN, known as 'Mr Slang', is the world's leading lexicographer of dictionaries of anglophone slang. His first dictionary appeared in 1984 and since then he has written and broadcast widely on the subject. The Cassell Dictionary of Slang appeared in 1998, the Chambers Dictionary of Slang in 2008 and the three-volume Green's Dictionary of Slang in 2010. The material, which deals with the slang of every English-speaking country, dates from approximately 1400 and continues as far as possible to the present day. As of 2016, this has been available online and is expanded and revised in quarterly updates. At present it offers approximately 140,000 slang words and phrases, underpinned by around 635,000 citations or illustrative examples. Green has also written a history of lexicography (Chasing the Sun: Dictionary-Makers and the Dictionary They Made, 1996), a history of slang (Language! 500 Years of the Vulgar Tongue, 2014) and a 'lexico-biography' (Odd Job Man, 2014). Other slang-related titles include The Slang Thesaurus (1988), Slang Down the Ages (1993), Getting Off at Gateshead (2008), Crooked Talk (2016) and The Stories of Slang (2016). His ongoing collection of The Timelines of Slang (the chronological ordering of the slang vocabularies of the counter-language's favourite topics) is available online. Online links: Green's Dictionary of Slang: https://greensdictofslang.com The Timelines of Slang: the timelines of slang.tumblr.com Website: jonathongreen.co.uk Twitter: @misterslang
The revealing stories behind slang, the language that shows us at our most human