A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries

A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries PDF Author: Julie Coleman
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191563587
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 515

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Book Description
This book continues Julie Coleman's acclaimed history of dictionaries of English slang and cant. It describes the increasingly systematic and scholarly way in which such terms were recorded and classified in the UK, the USA, Australia, and elsewhere, and the huge growth in the publication of and public appetite for dictionaries, glossaries, and guides to the distinctive vocabularies of different social groups, classes, districts, regions, and nations. Dr Coleman describes the origins of words and phrases and explores their history. By copious example she shows how they cast light on everyday life across the globe - from settlers in Canada and Australia and cockneys in London to gang-members in New York and soldiers fighting in the Boer and First World Wars - as well as on the operations of the narcotics trade and the entertainment business and the lives of those attending American colleges and British public schools. The slang lexicographers were a colourful bunch. Those featured in this book include spiritualists, aristocrats, socialists, journalists, psychiatrists, school-boys, criminals, hoboes, police officers, and a serial bigamist. One provided the inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson's Long John Silver. Another was allegedly killed by a pork pie. Julie Coleman's account will interest historians of language, crime, poverty, sexuality, and the criminal underworld.

A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries

A History of Cant and Slang Dictionaries PDF Author: Julie Coleman
Publisher: OUP Oxford
ISBN: 0191563587
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 515

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book continues Julie Coleman's acclaimed history of dictionaries of English slang and cant. It describes the increasingly systematic and scholarly way in which such terms were recorded and classified in the UK, the USA, Australia, and elsewhere, and the huge growth in the publication of and public appetite for dictionaries, glossaries, and guides to the distinctive vocabularies of different social groups, classes, districts, regions, and nations. Dr Coleman describes the origins of words and phrases and explores their history. By copious example she shows how they cast light on everyday life across the globe - from settlers in Canada and Australia and cockneys in London to gang-members in New York and soldiers fighting in the Boer and First World Wars - as well as on the operations of the narcotics trade and the entertainment business and the lives of those attending American colleges and British public schools. The slang lexicographers were a colourful bunch. Those featured in this book include spiritualists, aristocrats, socialists, journalists, psychiatrists, school-boys, criminals, hoboes, police officers, and a serial bigamist. One provided the inspiration for Robert Lewis Stevenson's Long John Silver. Another was allegedly killed by a pork pie. Julie Coleman's account will interest historians of language, crime, poverty, sexuality, and the criminal underworld.

A Dictionary of the Underworld

A Dictionary of the Underworld PDF Author: Eric Partridge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 901

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Book Description


A Dictionary of World Mythology

A Dictionary of World Mythology PDF Author: Arthur Cotterell
Publisher:
ISBN: 0192177478
Category : Mythology
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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The Finger

The Finger PDF Author: Angus Trumble
Publisher: Melbourne Univ. Publishing
ISBN: 0522857698
Category : Fingers
Languages : en
Pages : 322

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Book Description
In this collision between art and science, history and pop culture, the acclaimed art historian Angus Trumble examines the finger from every possible angle. His inquiries into its representation in art take us from Buddhist statues in Kyoto to the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel, from cave art to Picasso's Guernica, from Van Dyck's and Rubens's winning ways with gloves to the longstanding French taste for tapering digits. But Trumble also asks intriguing questions about the finger in general: How do fingers work, and why do most of us have five on each hand? Why do we bite our nails? This witty, odd, and fascinating book is filled with diverse anecdotes about cow-milking, the fingerprint of a grave robber in King Tut's tomb, and a woman in Trumble's local bank whose immensely long, coiled fingernails do not prevent her from signing a check. Side by side with historical discussions of rings and gloves and nail varnish are meditations on the finger's essential role in writing, speech, sports, crime, law, sex, and, of course, the eponymous show of contempt.

Dictionary of the Underworld

Dictionary of the Underworld PDF Author: Eric Partridge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages :

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Slang

Slang PDF Author: Michael Adams
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199986533
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 257

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Book Description
Slang, writes Michael Adams, is poetry on the down low, and sometimes lowdown poetry on the down low, but rarely, if ever, merely lowdown. It is the poetry of everyday speech, the people's poetry, and it deserves attention as language playing on the cusp of art. In Slang: The People's Poetry, Adams covers this perennially interesting subject in a serious but highly engaging way, illuminating the fundamental question "What is Slang" and defending slang--and all forms of nonstandard English--as integral parts of the American language. Why is an expression like "bed head" lost in a lexical limbo, found neither in slang nor standard dictionaries? Why are snow-boarding terms such as "fakie," "goofy foot," "ollie" and "nollie" not considered slang? As he addresses these and other lexical curiosities, Adams reveals that slang is used in part to define groups, distinguishing those who are "down with it" from those who are "out of it." Slang is also a rebellion against the mainstream. It often irritates those who color within the lines--indeed, slang is meant to irritate, sometimes even to shock. But slang is also inventive language, both fun to make and fun to use. Rather than complain about slang as "bad" language, Adams urges us to celebrate slang's playful resistance to the commonplace and to see it as the expression of an innate human capacity, not only for language, but for poetry.

Subcultures

Subcultures PDF Author: Ken Gelder
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134181272
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 197

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Book Description
Ken Gelder covers a remarkable range of forms and practices across many different subcultural groups: from the Ranters to the riot grrrls, from bebop to hip hop, and from hippies and Bohemians to digital pirates and virtual communities.

Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo

Dictionary of American Underworld Lingo PDF Author: Hyman Elias Goldin
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Cant
Languages : en
Pages : 340

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Book Description
Classic dictionary of criminal and gangster slang, described by H.L. Mencken as "the best thing of its kind I have ever seen." Compiled by the editors from the contributions of actual inmates of American prisons.

Rude Britannia

Rude Britannia PDF Author: Mina Gorji
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1136009981
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description
Media commentators have noted a rising public tolerance to the use of rude or offensive words in modern English. John Lydon’s obscene outburst on 'I’m a Celebrity...' only provoked a handful of complaints – a muted reaction compared to the furore following his use of the f-word on television twenty-eight years earlier. This timely and authoritative exploration of rudeness in modern English draws together experts from the academic world and the media – journalists, linguists, lexicographers and literary critics – and argues that rudeness is an important cultural phenomenon. Tightly edited with clear accessibly written pieces, the essays look at rudeness in: the media literature football chants street culture seaside postcards. With contributions from media figures including Tom Paulin and leading media-friendly linguists Deborah Cameron and Lynda Mugglestone, Rude Britannia raises concerns about linguistic and social codes, standards of decency, what is considered taboo in the public realm, constructions of bawdy, class, race, power and British identity.

A Dictionary of the Underworld, British and American

A Dictionary of the Underworld, British and American PDF Author: Eric Partridge
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Americanisms
Languages : en
Pages : 817

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Book Description