Dictionary Of American Underworld Lingo

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.

With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang was warmly received when its first edition appeared in 1998. 'Brilliant.' said Mark Lawson on BBC2's The Late Review; 'This is a terrific piece of work - learned, entertaining, funny, stimulating' said Jonathan Meades in The Evening Standard.But now the world's best single-volume dictionary of English slang is about to get even better. Jonathon Green has spent the last seven years on a vast project: to research in depth the English slang vocabulary and to hunt down and record written instances of the use of as many slang words as possible. This has entailed trawling through more than 4000 books - plus song lyrics, TV and movie scripts, and many newspapers and magazines - for relevant material. The research has thrown up some fascinating results

Rat. Dope. Booze. Gun moll. Shakedown. The popularity of these terms in American English is due, in part, to an obscure Boston lawyer who, perhaps as a lark, published a slim dictionary of criminal slang in 1908. Joesph M. Sullivan's limited published output plays an important role in American criminal slang. His terms and definitions are widely cited in dictionaries, scholarly papers, and the popular media. This book presents the contents of Sullivan's "Criminal Slang: A Dictionary of the Vernacular of the Under World" as first published by the Detective Pub. Co. in 1908. The original content been extensively annotated to include considerable new information Sullivan presented in two additional publications, as well as to clarify ambiguity in Sullivan's original texts. All of Sullivan's slang terms and definitions are, for the first time, presented here in a single authoritative, alphabetized listing. An introduction puts Sullivan's work into historical context, along with a bibliography of American criminal slang dictionaries and glossaries from 1859-1918. A series of original illustrations demonstrates Sullivan's skill in choosing words for his dictionary by charting the growth the growth for several of his terms from 1860 to the present.

Originally published: New York: The Macmillan Company, 1950. xv, 804 pp. Reprint of the second edition. Thoroughly engrossing, A Dictionary of the Underworld offers definitions for such obscure terms and phrases as "witch-hazel man" (heroin addict), "eason" (to tell) and "budge a beak" (run away). "Once in about every generation a book is published which dominates its field. Such a book is Partridge's Dictionary of the Underworld, which is not only the first extensive work on the underworld to appear in the twentieth century, but also the largest in the English language. (...) It is truly a monumental work, so monumental that scholars may well be disturbed by its aura of substantiality, for it will undoubtedly be cited and quoted or years to come." --David W. Maurer, American Speech, Vol. 26, No. 1 (February 1951), 38. One of the great lexicographers of the twentieth century, ERIC PARTRIDGE [1894-1979] had a keen interest in slang and unconventional English. He wrote over forty books on the English language and compiled the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, Shakespeare's Bawdy and A Dictionary of Catch Phrases. He also wrote novels under the pseudonym Corrie Denison.