“The only dictionary to carry 997 words for penis, 856 words for vagina, and 1,232 words describing sexual intercourse” screams the accompanying flyer. We also learn, in this massively tasteless piece of publicity, that there are 449 words for beer, 184 for vomit, 797 for masturbation, and 707 for marijuana. I’m sure we don’t particularly want to know this! I suppose it got our attention though, and I suppose we can acknowledge the depth and thoroughness of the compiler’s research, or the murky nature of slang! Let me assure the reader, though, that the book goes beyond, well beyond, just sex, drink and drugs. Whether or not Jonathon Green had a hand in the publicity, his is certainly an upbeat and assertive introduction: “the first brand‐new attempt to codify the slang vocabulary to appear in the UK since the first edition of Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English appeared in 1937.” Not that there haven’t been others published since, including Green’s own Dictionary of Contemporary English, now in its third edition, but “All that said, this dictionary is the first in 60 years to go back to the early sixteenth century and makes its way from there”. A bold claim, but the claim is backed up with some 70,000 words and phrases from the English‐speaking countries of the world, so it is a claim worthy of further investigation. Beyond the hype, what is the reality? Is brash Green a worthy successor to the great Partridge?
A trifle overweight, rather mean on the white space, and a binding which looks decidedly weak, the book is, nonetheless, treasure. A standard dictionary format is adopted with the term treated in bold, followed by an indication of the part of speech, date of origin, place of origin, the meaning or meanings, and common suffixes. See and see also references are common, and definitions are liberally supplied with additional information. To take but one example, one of seven meanings of “jive” as a verb is the 1940s appearance of the verb meaning “to fit in, to make sense, to agree, especially in negative uses, e.g. that don’t jive, that doesn’t make sense.” We are told that the standard English equivalent is “jibe”. Another brief taste of the richness in this dictionary is the root term “plastic”: thus we have plastic (credit card), plastic (synthetic, false, insincere), plastic cow (non‐dairy creamer), plastic job (plastic surgery), plastic out (assume temporarily an artificial mode of behaviour), and plastic paddies (children of first‐generation Irish immigrants to the UK!).
A high proportion of the entries are phrases. These are hard to incorporate in an alphabetical sequence, particularly when lacking “hard” terminology, but I was surprised not to find references from other words in the phrase, thus: “go chase yourself” (go away), but no related entry under “chase”, and “God bless the Duke of Argyle” (an insinuation that one has lice and for which the iron border posts erected by a nineteenth‐century duke in Glasgow could be used as scratching‐posts by the verminous citizens!), but no entry under “Argyle”. Will a thesaurus of slang follow, I wonder? What are those 449 words for beer? An attempt is made to provide etymologies: dates, and geographical origins. The author regrets that despite his initial hopes, he does not offer citations, but: “it would have undermined what I wish it [this book] most to be: an accessible, useable work of reference. Time and size both conspire against citation, at least for a one‐volume work of the chronological spread that I have chosen, and I opted for immediacy and, as far as I can, linguistic comprehensiveness.” This is a great pity. At least there is an impressive bibliography though, which is some compensation.
Green’s introduction has a somewhat political “spin” (a word not included). There are, of course, many definitions of slang. According to Green, slang is “A jackanapes lexicon of the dispossessed. The language of the rebel, the outlaw, the despised, the marginal, the young. Above all it is the language of the city ‐ urgent, pointed, witty, cruel, capable both of excluding and including, of mocking and confusing ... Reviled and proscribed by pedants and purists, it is endlessly resilient, inventive and untamable.” Hardly a definition, more a manifesto! Green is clear about what is, or is not, to be covered. Jargon, and the “swathes of military language that features so much in Partridge is excluded” but included is the newer argot of the drug culture and other contemporary colloquialisms so much a feature in today’s youth culture and in the popular media, whether printed, film, TV or the Internet. To this extent Green is attempting both to update and complement Partridge.
The dictionary is easy to use, and for £25, its 70,000 entries and 1,312 pages are superb value. I would have preferred a more robust and less cramped physical book production, a more restrained introduction, and a less offensive hype. The book falls uncomfortably between a quality reference book in the Oxford, Macmillan and Routledge mould, and the popular cheap home reference market, which is Cassell’s forte. The juxtaposition of classic slang from the seventeenth and eighteenth century with the drug and sex culture of the l990s, much of which will soon be obsolete, is awkward, and I think a mistake. Why not continue where Partridge left off? Something less comprehensive, or something more robust, is needed. But make no mistake, this is a “must‐buy” reference book. It does enormously extend the coverage of anything else available; the coverage and scholarship are impressive; and it is, goddammit, great fun! A “cool hot‐dogger”, or even a “hot dinner” (=winner)! Be warned, though, this book is highly addictive! The richness and inventiveness of slang is amazing. Far from being in any sense a “dumbing down” of language or meaning, slang is where new language comes from. When standard language fails to encapsulate a situation or an experience, new terms are created, some of which become standard. And so fast is new language being created, that “Green’s Slang” will be an early source of reference.
