Letter to the Editor

Abstract

Dear Editor, I enjoyed reading the review of Green’s Dictionary of Slang (IJL 31.3, September 2018, pp. 358–363). It brought together two innovative and imaginative lexicographers: Jonathon Green and Patrick Hanks. But I must take issue with the reviewer on two matters. On p. 359 of the review, it is said ‘The editors of Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary (MWIII, 1961), innocent of any conception of English register, did not use “Slang” or any other register labels…’ Not so. In its front matter the dictionary’s Explanatory Notes name, discuss, and exemplify, among MWIII’s Status Labels (section 8, pp. 18a-19a), the three stylistic labels slang, substand (= substandard), nonstand (= nonstandard). (MWIII does not, however, use the labels colloquial or informal.) On p. 360 of the review there is a quote, from P.G. Wodehouse, ‘if he gets the bird, all will be off’. The reviewer seems to regard this bird as meaning ‘person’ in Wodehousian slang. Yet on p. 362 it is said that Green calls get the bird ‘an idiomatic phrase defined as “esp. theatrical use, to be jeered, mocked etc.”’ Unfortunately, I have not got the original passage from Wodehouse. But I think it means ‘if he is jeered, mocked, or otherwise denigrated, all will be off”: for me, what is relevant here is not just the word bird but the phrase gets the bird. After all, on p. 360 the review quotes Wodehouse as using ‘if he gets the bird’ as a vernacular gloss referring to someone ‘appearing to disadvantage in public’.