Green’s Dictionary of Slang is the dog’s bollocks

Soon after Samuel Johnson’s Dictionary was published in 1755, so the story goes, he was approached by a pair of prudish readers who commended him for omitting ‘improper’ words. Johnson, according to one account, replied to the women: ‘What! my dears! then you have been looking for them?’

Today you can find improper words in any good dictionary – but only the main set. Fuck is there, but not fuckish, fuckfaced, fuck-nutty, fuck my old boots!, or fuck the dog and sell the pups. You’ll see shit in the usual sources, but good luck finding shit-breath, shit factory, shit-squirting, shit out, or shit on the dining room table.* Regular dictionaries just don’t cover the remarkable range of taboo vocabulary, nor should they.

For this we turn to specialist slang dictionaries. These do not shy from obscenity but embrace it in all its mutable monstrousness (I say this as someone who loves monsters, and mutants). And the best slang dictionary in existence – it defines, expertly, all the phrases above and thousands like them – is Green’s Dictionary of Slang (GDoS). Last year it went online. If that’s news to you, prepare for a treat.

Sweary links #23

Strong Language contributor Jonathon Green (@misterslang), the author of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, has a new project of special interest to SL readers: Slang Family Trees. “The aim,” writes Jonathon, “is to look at some of slang’s primary themes and show the way the lexis assesses given topics on a semantic basis.” The trees are constructed with mind-mapping software and appear as .pdf files. To get started, see vagina, penis, and drunk.

 

*

To drive awareness on International Women’s Day about how women are paid on average 25 percent less than men, J. Walter Thompson London created an outdoor campaign that uses censorship to show how offensive the world can seem with 25 percent missing. (Via Little Black Book)

 Find your purse?

*

Diving into muff

On Twitter, Merriam-Webster lexicographer Peter Sokolowski reminded us:

The most remarkable etymologies are the ones that have been staring you right in the face your whole life.

— Peter Sokolowski (@PeterSokolowski) May 14, 2015

As he explained in subsequent tweets, Peter was wide-eyed over the origin and evolution of secular,  including its French cognate, siècle. His remark was a resonant one, prompting many of us word lovers to offer our own instances. For me, his remark was right on the nose, shall we say, especially concerning some stronger language.

Sweary links

Shit we’ve seen around the Interwebs that you should give a fuck about:

Countable “fuck”

“Barack Obama Is Out of Fucks,” Ben Dreyfuss’s comment on the State of the Union address.

“The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck,” by Mark Manson. “What we don’t realize is that there is a fine art of non-fuck-giving. People aren’t just born not giving a fuck. In fact, we’re born giving way too many fucks.”

And let’s not forget our own Stephen Chrisomalis, who last month posted “How Many Swears Can We Give?”