¹ “Preface,” p. ix.

² Loc. cit.

³ New Words, the 1927 supplement to Webster.

⁴ Robert W. Service, “The Shooting of Dan McGrew,” line 1.

⁵ After quoting from the entry biff, interj. (not marked as slang), Mr. Hanley says: “This quotation [‘I didn't wait till he finished -afore I hit him, biff, alongside his smeller‘] will not be mistaken by any American reader for literary American English, but there is nothing to prevent the British or European reader from being misled. Similar misunderstandings ... have led Galsworthy and others to use such expressions as if they were in good standing in America ... In a historical dictionary of American English ... the British or European reader is entitled to find a sharper distinction between the levels of American speech than he will find in the present work.”—Dialect Notes, July, 1937, p. 589.

In a dictionary of modern American usage the reader is entitled to find a sharper distinction, etc.

⁶ By Mr. Theodore Norton in American Speech, Dec, 1936, p. 303.

⁷ P. viii.