Americanisms—Old & New: A Dictionary of Words, Phrases and Colloquialisms Peculiar to the United States, British America, the West Indies, &c., &c

John S. Farmer

Americanisms—Old & New: A Dictionary of Words, Phrases and Colloquialisms Peculiar to the United States, British America, the West Indies, &c., &c

London

Thomas Poulter & Sons

1889

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 respectable usage in America in a way not sanctioned by the best standards of the English language,” supplemented by “the racy, pungent vernacular of Western life.” Americanisms was a warmup to Farmer’s seven-volume Slang and Its Analogues, compiled with journalist William Ernest Henley. 

Ex coll. Karolyne & Bryan A. Garner. HHD no. 114