Eric Partridge Research Articles

The Use of Slang Words of Bruno Mars Songs

This study aims to identify the types of slang words and the meaning of slang words implied in Bruno Mars songs. The researcher divides the data into two parts which are primary data and secondary data. Primary data was taken from the internet in the form of Bruno Mars songs’ lyrics. The previous study and journal were taken as the secondary data to support this research. The methods used in this study is the qualitative descriptive and documentation technique. The main theory that the researcher used is the theory of slang proposed by Eric Partridge (1954). The result of this study shows that there are two types of slang words that contained in Bruno Mars songs lyric. Furthermore the meaning of slang words that implied in Bruno Mars songs lyric is refers to him as a singer.
 
 
 

An Analysis of Slang Used on Prawirotaman Street, Yogyakarta

This Paper discusses about the analysis of slang that is used by western tourist in Prawirotaman Street in Yogyakarta. The purpose of this study is to find out the types and meaning of slang primarily used by western tourists. It uses a qualitative description method where it describes slang that is used by western tourists. Theory of Eric Partridge (2004) in types of slang is used to indentify the slang. Three types of slang are commonly used by the western tourists on Prawirotaman Street, Yogyakarta and 15 reasons are found. Therefore, the research has implications for the reader to have and apply their knowledge about slang in informal context of daily communication especially in certain tourism area contexts. It also enriches reader’s linguistic feature that can enhance their communicative skills since the social functions of the language are learnt.

AN ANALYSIS OF SLANG IN GEEK CHARMING MOVIE

Sociolinguistics has a lot of aspects that can be researched. One of the aspects is slang. Slang is vocabulary that is used between people who belong to the same social group and who know each other well. Slang is very informal language. This research mainly discussed about slang in Geek Charming Movie. The purpose of this study is to identify the slangs and to describe the types of slang used in Geek Charming Movie. This study is limited to the main characters in the movie, they are Dylan Schoenfield and Josh Rosen. The writer used descriptive qualitative method by using Bodgan and Biklen J (1992) theory, which consists of four steps: unitization, categorization, explanation, and interpretation. After analizing the data, it is found out that there are three types of slang used by Dylan Schoenfield and Josh Rosen in Geek Charming Movie. The types of slang are public house slang, society slang, slang in public school and university. Those are types of slang according to Eric Partridge (1950). It is important to study slang because the result of this research can be used for further research and help readers to get more knowledge about slang.

An Analysis of Slang Words in Star Wars Jedi Academy: The Force Oversleep

This thesis is study about the types and the meaning of each slang words in Star Wars Jedi Academy: The Force Oversleep. The theory supported this analysis is Eric Partridge theory (2004) which explain about types of slang words. This thesis is designed as library research, in which the methodology used in this thesis is qualitative description method. The data contained in this thesis is taken from the words which contained in slang words in Star Wars Jedi Academy: The Force Oversleep storybook, the data is taken from whole pages, start from page 6 until page 172. The result of this analysis found 2 types of slang words, (1) Public School and University, and (2) Society Slang. The researcher explained the meaning of each slang words based on context. Keywords: Sociolinguistics, Slang, Types of Slang, Eric Partridge, Storybook.

Slang Words Analysis in “Mean Girls” Film

This study aims at classifying and finding out the meanings of slang words and/or phrases found in Mean Girls film. Every slang word or phrase from the film was classified into their types by using Eric Partridge’s theory (1954). This is a descriptive qualitative method conducted by portraying the possible meanings and the types of slang words or phrases found in the dialogues of the film. Several slang dictionaries and other related references were used to support this study. This study found that there are several types of slang words found in the film. They are: Public-house Slang, Society Slang, Public School and University and The Church..

“Curse This War”: Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Profanity

“Curse This War”: Virginia Woolf and the Politics of Profanity Erin Penner (bio) “You taught me language, and my profit on’t / Is I know how to curse. The red plague rid you / For learning me your language.”1 Caliban curses to assert his autonomy in Shakespeare’s The Tempest, neatly uncoupling the linguistic tool from the educator’s will. A subsequent line, however, imperils that distinction: “I needs must curse” (Shakespeare, Tempest, 2.2.4). Kate Brown and Howard Kushner seize on the “needs must” to argue that Caliban’s cursing is compulsory, the result of an involuntary linguistic overhaul that leaves him alienated from his own language and culture.2 Yet Caliban’s language reveals neither violent independence nor thoroughgoing capitulation, but rather the difficult task of discerning the difference. The profanity that proliferated in the trenches of the First World War has not excited the same literary interest as Caliban’s curse, even though millions of servicemen found their language shifting over the course of the war. Like most critics, Ashley Montagu regards the soldiers’ curses as a sign of robust corporate identity.3 But just as Caliban struggles to ensure that his language and motive are not simply those of his master, the poet David Jones speaks to the difficulty of maintaining individual control over one’s language during the First World War. Jones regrets that men in bayonet-fighting drills were instructed to “look fiercely upon the enemy when engaging him and to shout some violent word . . . This attempt to stimulate an artificial hate by parade-ground Staff-Instruction was not popular among men fresh from actual contact with the enemy.”4 [End Page 849] Profanity underscores the distinction between the soldier and his opponent; not incidentally, it also widens the gulf between soldiers and civilians, making it easier for soldiers to surrender themselves to the demands of bayonet fighting.5 Eugene Mc-Cartney published a glossary of “Trench Talk” in 1918 in an attempt to demystify the language of the front lines. Profane phrases were conspicuously absent from the lineup, allying profanity and war against the implied audience of civilians.6 John Brophy and Eric Partridge published a collection of soldiers’ songs in 1930, acknowledging that “one or two” had been omitted due to objectionable content, but the editors reassured readers that those were “merely lewd and not essentially soldiers’ songs.”7 Though the editors admit that soldiers’ conversation included a great deal of language that was “technically obscene,” Brophy and Partridge excuse the custom as merely habitual or mechanical (Songs and Slang, 15). In doing so, they echo the widespread assumption that the meaning of the profane or blasphemous word is not self-evident, but rather in need of contextual interpretation. Brophy’s and Partridge’s reluctance to include profanity in their volume, or to acknowledge its significance in soldiers’ speech and song, attests to their uncomfortable role as editors; they may have been active-duty soldiers in the war, but they are, a dozen years later, all too aware of civilian sensibilities. Soldiers cannot speak directly to those at home, but must instead impose their own blackout lines on the letters, memoirs, songs, and essays they write to those who do not share the soldier experience. Virginia Woolf, however, challenges the identification of profanity with the war front. By tracing profanity’s use in civilian discussions in Britain, she reveals the division between frontline profanity and home-fire prudery to be a false one, and offers new tools for assessing agency in profane speech. Like Brophy and Partridge, Woolf recognizes that, whatever its etymology, much of what is characterized as profanity in the modern world is only “technically obscene.” Profanity may have been derived from the language of the church or taboos about bodily functions, but its modern force comes from the speaker’s intent. Brophy and Partridge would excuse profanity as mere habit; Jones strives to convince his readers that the foul language of the trenches “reached real poetry. . . . I say more: the ‘Bugger! Bugger!’ of a man detailed, had often about it the ‘Fiat! Fiat!’ of the Saints” (In Parenthesis, xii). Woolf recognizes that even intent can be manipulated, however...

Prize-Problem Partridge

Writing in Slang To-day and Yesterday (1933), his pioneering history of the lexical subset that would become his life's work, Eric Partridge, who in time would become the 20th century's leading expert in its lexis, pondered the etymology of the word ‘slang’. It was, he confessed, a ‘prize-problem word’. 82 years on, and 36 since the death at 85 of the man whose many fans would nickname him ‘The Word King’, it is hard to avoid feeling that in terms of his work and the reputation it brought him, it was Partridge too who represents a ‘prize problem.’

Transport in the Smart city

There is indeed widespread confusion as to what `smart mobility' actually means. The role of transport in the generally accepted concept of `smartness' appears minuscule. According to the 2015 list of the world's 50 smartest companies by MIT Technology Review, only one of those 50 - Uber - is directly involved with city transport issues. To make it worse, Uber occupies the last space on the list. One of the reasons for keeping the transport sector so low on the scale of smartness may lie in the frequent over-usage, or 'abusage' (pace Eric Partridge), of the word `smart', often reduced to a meaningless soundbite. And yet, the modern city's transport scene is resplendent with exciting technological innovations - whether we call them smart or not. Let's face it, with volumes of traffic and population constantly on the increase, a well-organised `intelligent' transport system,which ensures unrestricted mobility for people and goods, is a cornerstone of urban life. (4 pages)

Partridge in print and online

Eric Partridge's A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, first published in 1937, ran to 8 editions culminating in 1984 and is widely acknowledged as the definitive record of twentieth-century British slang. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (NPD) maintains the tradition impressively, enhanced by a more conventional approach to citing sources, a broader focus to include examples of colloquial and vernacular vocabulary worldwide and prominence given to usage since 1945. A thousand new entries from the UK, USA, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland and the Caribbean, and increased representation of the language of social media, document linguistic innovation and/or reflect more sophisticated lexical data capture since the previous print edition of 2006. The 19 pages of introductory text outline criteria for inclusion, describe the structure of entries and provide a fascinating set of observations on slang drawn from Partridge's many published works. With over 60,000 entries the second edition of NPD is complemented for the first time by Partridge Slang Online (PSO), a resource which offers new ways to access and interrogate the data.

Unconventional English in a conventional setting: the genesis and joy of the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

This article is a personal reflection on the pivotal role of Eric Partridge, how his personality and experience shaped his lexicography, and how the inherited ‘spirit’ of Partridge is invested in the new dictionaries that bear his name. An online version is to be published alongside an updated second edition of the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (Dalzell and Victor 2012) now in preparation. The process of translating an established dictionary model to a digital environment is not without technical challenges but these are outweighed by new opportunities to gather and define previously unclassifiable items.

Caveat emptor

Caveat emptor

Queer Theory, Historicism, and Early Modern Sexualities

There was a time in Renaissance studies when any acknowledgment of the presence of homosexuality in a poem or play was likely to be accompanied by indignant or apologetic disavowals. Publishing Shakespeare's Bawdy (1947) at a time when editions of Shakespeare intended for use in schools were bowd lerized, Eric Partridge protected himself by coming out as one of those rational heterosexual persons who must find the notion of a homosexual Shakespeare ludicrous. C. S. Lewis, writing a few years later, could not deny the overt homo eroticism of Richard Barnfield's poetry, but could still express his distaste for the poet's sexual and artistic failures: His sonnets, like The Affectionate Shepherd, are pederastic, whether because Barnfield suffered in fact from the most uninterest ing of all misfortunes or in a sheer humanist frenzy of imitation.1 During the last quarter century, literary scholars of diverse critical and polit ical stripes have given sustained and rigorous attention not only to Renaissance homosexuality, but also to graphically sexual topics such as bestiality and enemas in A Midsummer's Night Dream and fisting in Coriolanus.2 Yet at least one recent

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

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...

History's ?Abrupt Revenges?: Censoring War's Perversions inThe Well of LonelinessandSleeveless Errand

O, 'n February 21, 1929, Norah James, the advertising and publicity manager at Jonathan Cape's publishing house, was on her way to work when she passed news placard that proclaimed Wom? an's Novel Seized. James did not stop to buy copy of the paper, but she would later discover that it was her first novel, Sleeveless Errand, selling papers that day. The night before, plain-clothes policemen had seized all copies of the book after Eric Partridge, the novel's publisher, unwillingly provided them with list of every bookseller to whom the book had been delivered.1 Thus did Norah James and her novel about the effects of wartime morality find their way onto the front pages and subsequently into the history of British censorship. James's experience neatly replicated that of Radclyffe Hall, whose novel, The Well of Loneli? ness, had been found guilty of obscene libel the previous year. James knew Hall and her ill-fated book well; James had read the manuscript of The Well of Loneliness at Cape's request and found it fine and sincere piece of work. She later attended the Bow Street trial that led to the novel's suppression. Between the time of The WelTs publication and eventual suppression, James saw quite lot of Hall, and the two became friendly. Hall even gave James a handsome cheque when the latter was ill and hard up.2 Despite the casual friendship of the two authors, and despite the eventual fate of their books, The Well of Loneliness and Sleeveless Errand could not be more different. The first pleads for understanding for inverts; the second condemns the promiscuous heterosexual behavior of the novel's protagonist and her set. The WelTs protagonist prays for God's mercy and deliverance; Sleeveless Errand's protagonist uses God and Christ as curse words. Stephen Gordon, HalFs

Comment: Malarkey and Its Etymology

In the late 1960s and early 70s, Peter Tamony's musings on Western Words were a regular feature of these pages. In 1974, turned his attention to Malarkey: TAD, and Its San Francisco Roots, after quoting the definition of malarkey in the Third New International (New International Dictionary of the English Language) : insincere or pretentious talk or writing designed to impress the hearer or reader and usually to distract attention from ulterior motives or actual conditions: bunkum, nonsense.1 The word is generally recognized as exclusive to North American English. Whimsical, discursive, reveling in words as both subject and medium, Tamony's expose in this instance bears no little resemblance to his topic, aptly prefaced by the verbose dictionary entry. After a brief survey of other lexicographical works, Tamony agrees that the precise origin of malarkey is unknown, but cites the conjecture of one dictionary that it might derive from an Irish surname.2 goes on to note that the great etymologist and specialist in popular speech Eric Partridge (1961:161) speculated that malarkey might well be traceable to the Greek malakia, or softness. Just how the semantic development might be thought to have worked-soft in the sense of weak in truth? In the sense of beguiling?-is not explained. To the best of my knowledge, no etymologist or word buff has addressed malarkey since that time. Tamony cites the use of the work in a cartoon from 1922 by Thomas Aloysius Dorgan (signed TAD) in the San Francisco Call & Post (9 March 1922:23). Here Milarkey seems to equate with phoney and the scene is of two men in a telephone booth trying to get a number from the operator. Tamony then entertains us with San Francisco stories of a corpse-clutched morgue keeper named Mullarkey and a socially visible oyster shucker from the 1870s who took this name in preference to Mallorca (his Portuguese father's name) under the mistaken impression that was Irish. Malarkeys were then in the Bay air. The chronicler of western words then states, this background of familiar usage it is likely that TAD drew his personification of that which is talk, bunkum, and baloney (162). Tamony notes the Irish origins of the semantically comparable word blarney. Were his derivation exact, malarkey would join words such as lynch and boycott as surnames of Ireland (if not Irish) that specific historical events propelled into popular language. The investigation of lexical innovation in popular speech, particularly with a historical perspective, is always a difficult matter, since written attestations must wait for realism to become a literary objective or for ethnographers to take to the field. Tamony's valuable contribution is to push the first attestation of malarkey and its variant spellings back a few years from that noted in The Oxford English Dictionary, which quotes from J.P. McEvoy's Hollywood Girl (1929), 'It's a wonder you notice me,' I told him. 'That's a lot of malaky,' says he (vii). Examples from other writers follow in fairly rapid succession: Variety, 1930; Frank Scully in Esquire, 1934; Down Beat, 1938.3 Then, in 1945, John Steinbeck writes in Cannery Row, He knew God damn well the story was so much malarky (13). From this we may isolate connections with the West Coast (San Francisco, Hollywood, Monterey) and the entertainment industry, plus the Irish surnames Dorgan, McEvoy, Scully, and of course, Malarkey. I propose a different origin for the word malarkey but suggest that the phonology of the parent term aligned itself with the Irish surname Malarkey in an example of the process rather loosely called folk etymology-hearing in an unfamiliar or new word an echo of a word one already knows, e.g., Jerusalem artichoke with the first element metamorphosing French girasol sunflower and the last referencing a known and comparable taste. …

Three Shakespearean Prints

A RMADO'S PHRASE IN LOVE'S LABOR'S LOST (5.1.89),' twice repeated by Holofernes (11. 91 and 119-20), is taken by most commentators to be a deliberate joke, underlined, as Eric Partridge points out, by the schoolmaster's admiration of the expression as well cull'd (1. 93).2 Partridge goes on to suggest that there is, perhaps, an allusion to afternoon dalliance, which to many readers probably seems rather strained, even if they remember Malvolio's preposterous fantasy about a daybed. But Armado's mind is running on more than shows and pageants, and I can perhaps offer some support for Partridge's intuition. Holofernes's answer to Armado's request is the show of the Nine Worthies, a subject that was a favorite theme not only for pageants, street shows, and entries from the Middle Ages onward but also for wall paintings, tapestries, and-from an early date following their invention-mechanically reproduced prints. As a motif, the Nine Worthies-with their matching Nine Women Worthies or Nine Modern Worthies-formed part of a popular genre of series prints, in which several related subjects were presented in a numbered group of cuts or plates, often symbolically presenting the passage of time. Typical secular themes were the Four Seasons, the Four Elements, the Five Senses, the Seven Planets, the Seven Liberal Arts and Sciences, the Seven (or Three, Four, Nine, Ten, or Twelve) Ages of Man, the Nine Muses, the Twelve Months (or the twelve celestial signs [5.2.797]), and so on. The series to which Armado alludes is the Four Parts of the Day: Morning, Noon, Evening, and Night. I believe that Shakespeare would have known this visual tradition;3 Figure 1 represents this

Amateur Etymologists Beware: Even During Carnival, Dirckx Lurckx-Reply

In Reply. —The chief purpose of my letter wasn't endorse any particular etymology of the word but challenge the erroneous derivation of it from a phrase meaning naval carriages. The Oxford English Dictionary(second edition),1The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology,2Webster's Third New International Dictionary,3The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language(third edition),4and Eric Partridge'sOrigins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English5concur in tracing carnival medieval Latincarnilevariaor one of its variants (carnilevamen, carnilevare, carnilevarium), all from Latin caro meaning flesh, meat andlevaremeaning to take away. The Oxford English Dictionary, Origins, and Albert Dauzat in hisDictionnaire Etymologique6explicitly reject the derivation fromCarne, vale! Meat, farewell! which is Italian, not Latin. Like most instances of folk etymology (admiral from admire, belfry from bell, cutlet from cut, and so on), it

Geoffrey Chaucer by Jill Mann

REVIEWS at times is distracting; she explains that "connotations of 'femininity' often make this word inappropriate" (p. 1 n. 1), but perhaps a justification on grounds of feminist theory would be more appropriate for a study of this type than a reference to Eric Partridge's Usage andAbusage. Overall, McLeod's history of the catalog of women, and its associations with the florilegium, is a wonderful survey of the genre that will be useful for many people. Chaucerians, for example, will find the first three chap­ ters helpfulbackgroundmaterialfordiscussionof theWife ofBath as much as for the Legend. MARTHA A. KALLSTROM Georgia Southern University JILL MANN. Geoffrey Chaucer. Feminist Readings Series. Atlanric High­ lands, N.J.: Humanities Press International, 1991. Pp. xv, 222. $39.95 cloth, $12.50 paper. Women's traditionally ascribed adaptability to change, pity, and patience form the basis for Jill Mann's feminist reading of Chaucer's works. Her approach, by her own prefatory declaration, comes out of no particular school of feminist criticism. Instead she seeks to "describe Chaucer's 'femi­ nism' in his own terms rather than ours,... to avoid bounding him in the orthodoxies ofthe present" (p. xii). It is important to recognize this caveat before picking up the book, for if a reader approaches it expecting radically new approaches to text, as the Feminist Readings Series announcement promises, she will be disappointed. In fact, Mann criticizes new historicism andpolitical concerns of feministcriticismas either binding Chaucer in the past and "patronizingly awarding him praise" for anticipating modern views (p. xii) or "perpetuat[ing] the sterile antithesis between active and passive, to stigmatise female passivity only to find that the obverse of this is approval of male activity" (p. 185). What Mann offers is a feminist reading that focuses on the status of women in Chaucer's writing (p. 165) to determine that he repudiates the male role model of action, aggression, and coercion in favor of a female model of passivity, pity, and patience that ultimately undercuts the male model and creates a new mutuality between the genders. Claiming Chau­ cer to be free of the culturally constructed preference for "activity," and 177 STUDIES IN THE AGE OF CHAUCER using Prudence, Constance, and Griselda as evidence, Mann concludes, "For him, it is the 'passive' role that is superior; we must never forget that patience conquers" (p. 161). But that is Mann's conclusion. She begins in a slightly different place. Chapter 1,"Women and Betrayal," praises Chaucer for retrieving a female viewpoint in conventionally male-centered stories. Mann finds in both Dido and Criseyde Chaucer's acute awareness of a special burden that women bear: their knowledge that their actions cannot escape meaning in reference to models of good and bad women (p. 17). Similarly, in The Manciple's Tale we see Chaucer's realization that the words and the ways tellers choose to tell stories determine attitudes toward women in those stones. Instead of balancing stories of bad women with stories of good women in a conventional response to misogyny, Mann sees Chaucer challenging the authority of the misogynist stories themselves in The Legend of Good Women. Retelling the stories with the women's concerns at the center, he showsmen eliciting pity from the women butnotreciprocating. This causes the poet to cry out for the pity in his own heart, and the reader, joining him in the"womanly ethos of pity,""is feminised, as it were, by the process of reading" (p. 41). In the second chapter,"Anti-Feminism," Mann argues, through May of The Merchant's Tale and the Wife of Bath, that Chaucer sees female shrewishness as the inevitable result of male selfishness and antifeminist stereotypes. This near-symbiotic relationship in which women use stereo­ typical behavior to withstand oppressive male behavior comes to an end only when the malesurrendershis sense of"maistrye." Then, as Mannreads the end of The Wife of Bath's Tale in chapter 3, "The Surrender of Maistrye," the woman's desire becomes the man's desire in her desire to please him; the two meet in a"vision of mutuality, which strips obedience of its oppression by making it an emotional response which matches and balances male...

Reviews

Reviews

Piracy in Argot Dictionaries

PIRACY IN ARGOT DICTIONARIES' RICHARD A. SPEARS Many dictionaries are at least partial revisions of previous dictionaries. When a modern dictionary of standard English is based on some other work—a previous edition, or the legally obtained rights to some other didionary—the debt is usually acknowledged in the front matter. There are lapses in this practice, of course. Robert Burchfield demonstrates »that editors of dictionaries of standard English do not always reveal their heavy dependence on previous dictionaries, and he cites a number of interesting lines of descent in such dictionaries. He concludes his essay by suggesting that computers may serve further to establish lineages. In this paper I will be talking about a general and more blatant pradice in dictionaries of nonstandard English—specifically drug argot collections— where the work of previous authors is simply copied into a new dictionary or glossary with no acknowledgment of the earlier sources—a kind of "revision without permission." A computer examination of word lists from glossaries and dictionaries of this genre was used to reveal lines of earlier descent similar to what Burchfield found for standard dictionaries . In the preparation of The Slang and Jargon of Drugs and Drink, I constructed a simple computer database to be used as a directory or index to the sources and attestations used in the work. This database consisted of little more than the entry form, a gloss, and a code for the source. When alphabetized on the entry form, this large list suggested the various lineages of material. By simply scanning the list visually I could see frequently occurring combinations of sources. Of course, these correlations are only suggestive of a line of descent. Close comparison of definitions, subsenses, unique spelling and hyphenation, and typographical errors is required to support a case of suspected lexical piracy, and, of course, there may be explanations for these similarities other than lexical piracy. 124 Richard A. Spears125 The compilers of many glossaries and didionaries of argot do not acknowledge their sources even as well as the editors of dictionaries of standard English. Many collections of argot or slang are little more than reprintings of previous works augmented by the author's own terms and paraphrasings. More often than not, there is no acknowledgment of sources, even copyright sources. Some such collections are simply copied with no additions. As a case in point, it appears that A New Dictionary of the Canting Crew by a "B. E." (c. 1 700) was revised for the New Canting Dictionary (1725). Francis Grose added to that material for his dictionaries of 1785, 1788, and 1796. Those works became Clarke's Lexicon Balatronicum (1811), which was revised and reprinted by Pierce Egan in 1823. A problem arises when some of the same material appears in the Vocabulum of 1859 by the American, George Matsell. This work makes it seem as if most of the cant terms used in England from before 1 700 had been imported into the United States by the mid-1800s. Doubtless, some of them had been imported, but we will never find out which from studying Matsell. In the area of drug terminology, David W. Maurer seems to have become an involuntary exporter of drug terms. Maurer's original 1936 and 1938 glossaries of drug terms were implanted without acknowledgment in Berrey and Van den Bark's The American Thesaurus of Slang (1942), where they were harvested by Eric Partridge for use in his Dictionary of the Underworld (1949). Partridge was politely taken to task on this point in Maurer's review of the Dictionary of the Underworld. The thoughtful reply by Partridge was met with a more severe attack by Legman. The result was that the later editions of The American Thesaurus ofSlang and Dictionary of the Underworld carried appropriate acknowledgments of Maurer's original argot collection. That did not, however, break the chain. The same terms—now cut off from their history—continued to appear in other glossaries. 126Piracy in Argot Dictionaries The Maurer collections became the basis of a larger glossary in the four editions of Maurer and Vogel's Narcotics and Narcotic Addiction (1954, 1962, 1967, 1973). Parts of early versions of this larger...