Dictionary of American Slang: 4th Edition

2155 Pages·2007·7.36 MB·English

by  Barbara Ann Kipfer

DICTIONARY OF
American Slang

FOURTH EDITION
BARBARA ANN KIPFER Ph.D.
Editor
ROBERT L. CHAPMAN Ph.D.
Founding Editor
CONTENTS
PREFACE to the Fourth Edition
GUIDE to the Dictionary
A
B
C
D
E
F
G
H
I
J
K
L
M
N
O
P
Q
R
S
T
U
V
W
X
Y
Z
APPENDIX A: Words for “Drunk,” “Intoxicated,” and “Intoxicated by
Drugs”
APPENDIX B: Guide to Text Messaging Abbreviations
Copyright
About the Publisher
PREFACE
To the Fourth Edition
T owes explanations to the general reader
HE EDITOR OF A DICTIONARY OF SLANG
about why such a book is made, how it was made, and how to use it.
Also, the editor must attempt to explain what slang is and the history of
slang lexicography.
Why This Book Was Made
Why devote a book to this sort of uncouth language? Dictionaries are
popularly thought to have strong influence, giving validity and authority
to the entries and therefore having social and moral impact. A dictionary
like this, which specializes in terms not to be lightly used in polite
society, may therefore be thought of as teaching and advocating these
terms.
Theoretically in linguistics, any corpus or body of vocabulary is worth
recording. Lexicography is a science in that it values accuracy,
completeness, and demonstrability. As a lexicographer, I collect and
record slang because it is there—but this has been done carefully and
responsibly. It is up to the reader to also be careful and responsible in
using these powerful and provocative words.
Yes, children may sneak off into corners with this book and find dirty
words—but the printed book is now challenged and often superseded as
a source of these terms by films, television programs, and the Internet.
These terms are no longer kept quietly in books, but at least in a book
such as this, the words are explained, their usage offered, and histories
described when available.
History of Slang Lexicography
In historical justification, this book joins itself to an Anglo-American
tradition going back a little more than 200 years. Credit as founder of
general slang lexicography (as distinct from those who dealt in
specialized lexicons of the vocabularies of thieves and tramps) goes to
the distinguished British antiquarian Francis Grose, who published A
Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785. After two further
editions, the book became the basis of an 1811 updating and expansion
called Lexicon Balatronicum: A Dictionary of Buckish Slang, University Wit,
and Pickpocket Eloquence, with nearly 5,000 defined entries. Grose’s book
and its successor include the slang of the so-called balatrones, “jesters,
buffoons, contemptible persons; literally babblers,” and of learned
humorists, those of the universities, as well as of thieves.
Grose’s work held on until it was superseded in 1859 by John C.
Hotten’s A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words, which had
new editions through 1874. Then, in 1887, Professor Albert M.V. Barrere
published Argot and Slang: A New French and English Dictionary at his own
expense until Ballantyne Press offered the 956 pages by subscription two
years later as A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon, & Cant. Barrere’s collaborator
was Charles Godfrey Leland, the first American to figure prominently in
general slang lexicography. The dictionary embraced “English,
American, and Anglo-Indian slang, Pidgin English, tinkers’ jargon and
other irregular phraseology.”
In 1890, the first volume of John Stephen Farmer and William Ernest
Henley’s Slang and Its Analogues was published; volume 2 came the
following year and the subsequent five volumes through 1904. The total
number of pages published was 2,736.
After Farmer and Henley, good general slang lexicography was not
resumed until 1937, when Eric Partridge brought out the first edition of
his masterwork, A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, which
was updated and enlarged in numerous editions and printings by
Partridge himself through 1980, as well as posthumously to the present.
Partridge was an important lexicographer and scholar, as well as a
teacher, essayist, and novelist. He is credited with making slang
lexicography more or less respectable.
The first full-scale dictionary of American slang appeared in 1960
when Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner’s Dictionary of American
Slang was published by Thomas Y. Crowell (a company later
incorporated into HarperCollins). Professor Wentworth had previously
written the American Dialect Dictionary, portions of which were adapted
for the slang dictionary. Flexner added thousands of slang definitions
and wrote the invaluable preface, a wonderful treatment of the
sociolinguistics of slang, last printed in the 1986 New Dictionary of
American Slang. He also did the analytical work reflected in that book’s
appendix, which treated the processes of word-formation in slang. The
700-page Wentworth and Flexner was enlarged and updated in 1967 and
1975, and it is the basis of the present book.
The development of slang is swift and widespread. One may question
how a print dictionary can hope to be accurate or up-to-date in the
Internet age. The answer is, it cannot be; it is a snapshot in time. The
analysis of what to include is much more important for a print
dictionary, then, because it is essential to attempt to determine what
words and meanings have lasting value versus ephemeral uses. Because
of the enormity of the American slang vocabulary, no print or online
dictionary is close to comprehensive despite the hard work of slang
lexicographers.
The Internet is a dispenser, expediter, enhancer, and preserver of slang
that must be entered into with a bit of caution. Any person or group can
describe its slang vocabulary for the world to access, updated as often as
daily. There are a growing number of glossaries and full-scale
dictionaries online, spreading new slang. Much of the material is raw,
unfiltered, and untouched by professional linguists or lexicographers. It
is interesting, possibly useful, but not comparable with well-researched
books.
How This Book Was Made
The book has a primary utility for people who find slang terms in speech
or writing and need help with their meaning. It also serves readers who
just plain enjoy slang and are curious about the particulars, such as
usage and etymology. This book is intended for the general reader and
does not include some of the very specialized vocabulary of subcultures.
The aim is to describe terms that have gained a kind of broad acceptance
and use.
The previous edition was analyzed for its user-friendliness, and
decisions were made to change some of the format of the entries, the
order of the senses, etc. The basic policies of this new edition remain the
same: that it is to be a general dictionary of current American slang
rather than a collection of special vocabularies, a scholarly historical
treatment, or a book with a regional or other bias.
The Wentworth and Flexner Dictionary of American Slang remains the
“seed,” and its wealth of material has been worked with over the years,
retaining much, discarding some, and reviewing/revising all.
The new resource of the Internet/World Wide Web has certainly
played a part in collecting and identifying new material, as well as
standard lexicographic collection methods. Many Web sites describing
slang terms exist, but almost none are authoritative in the sense that
they have been assembled by trained lexicographers. However, that does
not mean that they are not a great resource. Many Internet collections
were examined, along with print collections of slang, in deciding what to