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“Computer Slang”
Computer enthusiasts have long constituted a subculture, but nobody thought to record their distinctive language until Raphael Finkel, a doctoral student, began collecting it in a text file nicknamed “The Jargon File.” As he shared it with friends…
A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue
Grose’s concern was not the language as a whole but the “vulgar” (common) speech, including slang and “cant” (the jargon of thieves and beggars). Although all dictionaries involve some degree of plagiarism, it’s especially prominent in slang…
A Dictionary of American Regional English. 6 vols.
Although British regionalisms were documented beginning in the Victorian era, America had to wait until the late 20th century. Frederic G. Cassidy, a Jamaican-born linguist, sent 500 lexicographic allies armed with questionnaires and tape recorders…
A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English
After a decade of “close observation of colloquial speech,” Eric Partridge issued the 20th century’s most popular slang dictionary, which went through many editions. In early editions he treated “unpleasant terms . . . aseptically”—meaning that…
A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant, embracing English, American, and Anglo-Indian slang, pidgin English, tinkers’ jargon and other irregular phraseology. 2 vols
The French writer Albert Marie Victor Barrère teamed up with a folklorist, Philadelphian Charles Godfrey Leland, to focus on the “irregular phraseology” of Britain and America, including, for the first time, words derived from Yiddish. The vocabulary…
A Feminist Dictionary
If A Feminist Dictionary doesn’t look much like other dictionaries, that’s because it’s an avowed polemic rather than a work of practical lexicography. Professors Cheris Kramarae and Paula Treichler produced what one archivist called “sort of a cross…
A Glossary of Provincial and Local Words Used in England. Supplemented by Samuel Pegge
Grose’s Provincial Glossary (1787) was one of the earliest attempts to document versions of the language spoken in England outside London, Oxbridge, and the Home Counties. In 1814, Samuel Pegge wrote a supplement that was then combined into Grose’s…
Americanisms—Old & New: A Dictionary of Words, Phrases and Colloquialisms Peculiar to the United States, British America, the West Indies, &c., &c
John Stephen Farmer—occultist, probable pornographer, possible bigamist—focused on “the divergence . . . between the Queen’s English and the English of the New World,” words like dime, ding!, and Dixie. His interest was words “employed by general and…
Dictionary of Afro-American Slang
Linguists began to take African American speech seriously in the early 20th century, but it took until 1970 to get a book-length dictionary. Poet and novelist Clarence Major took many words from jazz (offbeat). Some are joyous (hot dog!) and some…
Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs, and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century. 2 vols
James Orchard Halliwell produced one of his century’s most comprehensive guides to regional dialect. His pairing of “archaic” and “provincial” is important: many were convinced that traces of Old and Middle English survived in the living speech of…