The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, vols. 1 and 2 (review)

Abstract

Reviews181 The New Partridge Dictionary ofSlang and Unconventional English, vols. 1 and 2. 2005. Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor. London & NY: Routiedge. Pp. 2400. t: 1he two volumes of this new dictionary (NPDSUE) represent a vast undertaking. The title pays tribute to the authors' spiritual mentor , the late Eric Partridge, but the authors cast a far wider net for slang items than Partridge (1970) did in his slang dictionary. Partridge was concerned primarily with the slang and unconventional English of Great Britain and to a lesser extent her dominions from the 1600s to the 1970s. NPDSUE expands the U.S. entries, and as for other areas, the list of contributors includes Richard Allsopp (Caribbean English), Diane Bardsley (New Zealand English), James Lambert (Australian English), John Loftus (Hiberno-English), and Lewis Poteet (Canadian English). Authors Dalzell and Victor cite Partridge's accurate observation that a dictionary constantly needs to be revised. Of course to some extent the updating has already been occurring with the publication of other dictionaries, e.g., Jonathon Green's Cassell's Dictionary ofSlang (2005: reviewed elsewhere in this issue — Ed.) and Jonathan Lighter's Historical Dictionary ofAmerican English (1994ff.). But every new dictionary, while overlapping to some extent with previous ones, also brings new material to the fore, and so we deal with a situation in which no single slang dictionary presents the entirety of English slang. For the amateur word lover, any of the slang dictionaries can be picked up and perused for enjoyment. In NPDSUE, there are, for example, Aunt Nell 'the ear' (UK; but why 'ear'?), Aunt Lily 'silly' (UK; rhyming slang, with the 1992 example 'Don't be so auntie'), Aunt Julia 'communist propaganda ,' Aunt Mary 'marijuana' (U.S., 1959; 'Mary is a familiar pun on "marijuana "'), basket! (Singapore; 'used for expressing great frustration.' But why?), Belushi (U.S.; 'a combination of cocaine and heroin. In memory of the speedball that killed film actor John Belushi, 1949-82'), Black Jeff 'a wasp' (Bahamas , 1982), burn logs 'smoke marijuana' (UK), Carrie/Carrie Nation/Carry/ Carry Nation 'cocaine' (US), carry the stick 'to live without a fixed abode' (US), carveyour knob 'to make you understand' (US; explanation: ?), CD 'a condom' (South Africa; Scamto youth street slang) , Coco the Clown 'cocaine' (UK) , coolaboola 'excellent, admirable, acceptable' (Ireland; 'an elaboration of cool (acceptable ) combining a slang abridgement of the Irish ruaille-buaille (a row, noisy confusion, noise)'). For the lexicographer or scholar of slang, NPDSUE is one of several dictionaries that need to be checked when researching a given slang item. So, for example, under shyster, NPDSUE correctly gives 1843 as the earliest attestation and then draws attention to my monograph Origin of the Term Shyster (1982), albeit without clarifying the etymology other than to say 'coined by Dictionaries:Journal oftheDictionary Society ofNorth America 27 (2006), 181-183 182Reviews New York journalist Mike Walsh.' Actually there's more to the etymology than that, but NPDSUE's treatment is still a big improvement over the one in OED2. Under Windy City, NPDSUE reflects the state-of-the-art research on the term, drawing attention to the work of Barry Popik in debunking the myth that the sobriquet was coined in conjunction with the 1893 World's Fair and in accurately stating that "Popik has traced the term to Cincinnati newspapers in 1876." And under hot dog (hot sausage in a roll) NPDSUE correctly says: "The term arose at Yale University in 1894 and was quickly embraced by students at other colleges. Past suggestions that the term arose at New York's Polo Grounds have been disproven by U.S. slang lexicographers Barry Popik and Gerald Cohen." Popik and I both worked on this subject, but Popik alone deserves full credit for tracing hot dog- back to Yale 1894 (or 1895) (see Cohen, Popik, and Shulman 2004) . NPDSUE presents 27 pages of bibliographical references, containing such interesting-sounding items as Sophie Wilson's Teen Speak: The Definitive Lexicon 2001, Tim Nind's Rude Rhyming Slang (London 2003), George Percy's The Language ofPoker: TheJargon and Slang Spoken Around the Poker Table (selfpublished 1988), and Kim Rich's Johnny's Girl: A Daughter's Memoir of Growing Up in Alaska's...