Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang [Hardcover]

Grant Barrett (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 10, 2004

Here is a wonderful Baedeker to down-and-dirty politics--more than six hundred slang terms straight from the smoke-filled rooms of American political speech.
Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang illuminates a rich and colorful segment of our language. Readers will find informative entries on slang terms such as Beltway bandit and boondoggle, angry white male and leg treasurer, juice bill and Joe Citizen, banana superpower and the Big Fix. We find not only the meaning and history of familiar terms such as gerrymander, but also of lesser-known terms such as cracking (splitting a bloc of like-minded voters by redistricting) and fair-fight district (which refers to areas redistricted to favor no political party). Each entry includes the definition of the word, its historical background, and illuminating citations, some going back more than 200 years. (We learn, for instance, that a term as seemingly current as political football actually dates back to before the Civil War.) Selected entries will have extended encyclopedic notes. The book also features sidebar essays on topics such as political words in Blogistan; a short history of "big cheese"; all about chads and the 2000 election; the suffix "-gate" and all the related Watergate terms; and the naming of legislation.
Political junkies, policy wonks, journalists, and word lovers will find this book addictive reading as well as a reliable guide to one of the more colorful corners of American English.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Not sure who started starve the beast economics, or where the term big cheese came from, or what a Repubocrat is? Not to worry; Barrett’s savvy guide to political lingo breaks down all the terms anyone could need to understand the D.C. chatterati. Starting with a short introduction by James Carville and Mary Matalin that explains how Washington’s "political Esperanto" evolved from the city’s diverse regional loyalties and its "altered perception of reality," the volume defines more than 600 slang words. And though the definitions are clear and easy to understand, the real fun lies in the historical citations, which refer to films and books as often as to newspapers and congressional reports. The citation for juice ("personal or political power or influence, often of a corrupt nature"), for example, contains a quotation from the 1963 JFK biopic PT 109, and the first citation for zoo plane ("an airplane carrying journalists accompanying a traveling politician") comes from Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear & Loathing Campaign Trail. Funny and useful, this book makes a good choice for word-lovers and watchdogs alike.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

From Booklist

The range of this delightful little dictionary is defined as "250 years of lively discourse," but most of the liveliness is of recent occurrence, with the entries being drawn primarily from the 1980s and 1990s, if not from the past two or three years. Even for words like mugwump (first example 1884) and snollygoster (1846), the editor has found more or less current instances of use.

Each entry contains part of speech, definition, and citations from a range of sources. Other elements that may be included are an etymology, a field label identifying the group or subculture that generally uses the term (for example, Mil. for military), variant forms, usage labels, cross-references, and notes. Much of the slang recorded here is indeed lively and clever. A prepared response to an opponent's anticipated assertion is a prebuttle. A red-headed Eskimo is a bill so precisely targeted that it might benefit only one specific person. A twinkie is someone or something that is appealing but lacking in substance. Velcroid applies to a person who seeks to advance by associating with a more important person. A clothespin vote is one that is cast unenthusiastically for a choice regarded as least objectionable. The idea is "that voters must use a clothespin to protect their noses from the supposed stench of such candidates."

By no means the least interesting part of the dictionary is the series of eight brief essays on topics (such as chads and the -gate suffix) about which Barrett felt compelled to comment at somewhat greater length than his definitions, notes, and etymologies permitted. This is a book to be read and enjoyed, not merely to be taken down from the shelf now and then and briefly consulted, and it is recommended for public and academic libraries. Harold Cordry
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (September 10, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195176855
• ISBN-13: 978-0195176858
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 6 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,439,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I am an American lexicographer and editor of The Official Dictionary of Unofficial English (May 2006, McGraw-Hill) and the online, award-winning Double-Tongued Dictionary. I am also co-host of the language-related public radio show A Way With Words, broadcast nationwide via radio, streaming, and podcast. I also serve as vice president for communications and technology for the American Dialect Society, an academic organization that has been devoted to the study of English in North America for more than 118 years. Formerly, I worked as lexicographer for Oxford University Press in New York City, for which I served as project editor of the Historical Dictionary of American Slang and edited the Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang (2004). I am currently part of a team working on a series of bilingual learner's dictionaries for Cengage (formerly Thomson Heinle) using Collins content and brand, I continue ongoing work with Cambridge University press for their Cambridge Dictionary of American English and Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary, I will soon begin a project with Oxford University Press for their joint US-UK dictionary database (as well as contributing slang entries to their next version of the New Oxford American Dictionary). On occasion, I contribute to the journal American Speech and write for newspapers such as the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Malaysian Star.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Outside the beltway? All over America!, September 16, 2004

By 

Grant Barrett "word-wrester" (Brooklyn, New York, United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang (Hardcover)

As the editor of this book, I'm happy to contradict the review below. We spent months combing through Oxford University Press' vast lexicographical resources to pick the best American political terms that qualified as slang and could be substantiated in the time and space available. Chinaman, usually found in the phrase "have a Chinaman," does indeed seem to be a Chicago political term, going back to at least 1973, and means "to have political influence." The reason it was not included, however, is that at the time of publishing, we had a single citation for it. Too many other better-substantiated terms took precedence. Fetcher, on the other hand, is almost too common to be considered slang, and so was not included, although juice bill, which means the same thing, is included in the book.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Hate Politics. Dig the book., September 16, 2004

By 

Not real name "Joker" (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang (Hardcover)

I really don't like political slang basically because I never know what the hell people from the "beltway" are talking about on the news. I finally have a resource that will tell me what one of those cloistered freaks taking charge of my government are talking about.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a timely dictionary!, September 16, 2004

By 

S. Kolowrat (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Hatchet Jobs and Hardball: The Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang (Hardcover)

I was given this book as a gift, and was a little shocked - as I love words, but I am not necessarily very politically minded...although I am trying - and I found this book to be truly enjoyable! I can use it when I try to seem "up" on politics and people are impressed! I have enjoyed reading the stories of where and when the terms started to come into use, and it's all thoughtful and well written!