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  • Chapter 7 - English Slang Dictionaries

  • from Part I - Issues in English Lexicography
  • Edited by Sarah Ogilvie, University of Oxford
  • Book:
    The Cambridge Companion to English Dictionaries
    Published online:
    18 September 2020
    Print publication:
    24 September 2020, pp 75-86

  • Summary

    In keeping with its character as evasive and subversive language, slang is hard to define. Some see it as urban masculine vocabulary focused on sex, intoxication, and excretion; others as instrumentally valuable in the construction of in- and out-groups, or as a matter of style to facilitate fitting in and standing out. This chapter traces the history of slang dictionaries from the first slang dictionary of 1699, written by the semi-anonymous ‘B. E.’, to the work of other slang lexicographers throughout the centuries: Francis Grose, John Camden Hotten, John Stephen Farmer, William Ernest Henley, Eric Partridge, Jonathan Lighter, and Jonathan Green.