Slang Down the Ages

by Jonathon Green

Takes popular standard English terms and traces the development of their slang equivalents over the past 500 years

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, History, Writing, Language

352 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1993

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

I am a lexicographer, that is a dictionary maker, specialising in slang, about which I have been compiling dictionaries, writing and broadcasting since 1984. I have also written a history of lexicography. After working on my university newspaper I joined the London ‘underground press’ in 1969, working for most of the then available titles, such as Friends, IT and Oz. I have been publishing books since the mid-1970s, spending the next decade putting together a number of dictionaries of quotations, before I moved into what remains my primary interest, slang. I have also published three oral histories: one on the hippie Sixties, one on first generation immigrants to the UK and one on the sexual revolution and its development. Among other non-slang titles have been three dictionaries of occupational jargon, a narrative history of the Sixties, a book on cannabis, and an encyclopedia of censorship. As a freelancer I have broadcast regularly on the radio, made appearances on TV, including a 30-minute study of slang in 1996, and and written columns both for academic journals and for the Erotic Review.

My slang work has reached its climax, but I trust not its end, with the publication in 2010 of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a three volume, 6,200-page dictionary ‘on historical principles’ offering some 110,000 words and phrases, backed up by around 410,000 citations or usage examples. The book covers all anglophone countries and its timeline stretches from around 1500 up to the present day. For those who prefer something less academic, I published the Chambers Slang Dictionary, a single volume book, in 2008. Given that I am in no doubt that the future of reference publishing lies in digital form, it is my intention to place both these books on line in the near future.

Reviews

[Budge Burgess · Rating 3 out of 5]

A book which has sat on a shelf for twenty and more years, something I've dusted (though not as often as I should), a book which I've rarely opened.
Clearly there's a lot of work and research gone into this, but, if you're writing some piece of fiction set in the 18th or 19th century or whatever, don't count on this to give you a real sense of how English was spoken. Language does change over time, but it also varies from place to place - Glasgow and Edinburgh use different vocabularies, Liverpool and Manchester have obviously different accents, etc., etc.
The book offers lots of widely different slang words for the people, institutions and events of everyday life over the centuries. Skim through it, look up specific fields, you'll find options. There are some fascinating words and hints at their origins / derivations and, for the writer, there could be stimuli here and there, words and names to get you thinking, to get you focused. But it's not going to tell you how the language was used in a given place at a given time - a few words, a few meanings, but no accent, no real sense of class division or the exclusivity of a particular patois / vernacular / dialect.
Interesting ... but.

[Mariam Mord'Sith · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's unfortunate the updated 2003 edition I am currently reading (http://books.google.com/books/about/S...) is not listed on Goodreads... oh well!

[Alessandra Varini]

I just read some parts because it wasn't what I needed.