Customer Reviews

Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Vol. 1: A-G

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According to a fascinating article in the Wall Street Journal by Jennifer Ordonez (Sept 7, 2000), this dictionary may never get beyond the letter O. Random House have stopped work on the editing because of the cost, and linguist J E Lighter has stopped delivering the text because of a row over royalties. Ambitious dictionaries don't make a profit for publishers, and Random House says it only commissioned a one volume work originally, way back in 1984. But it has made some money. The article points out that the cult best-seller "The F-Word" is in fact an extraction of a single entry from volume 1 - published under project editor Jesse Sheidlower's name after Lighter refused to have his name used. One of the reasons Lighter has stopped giving material to Random House, says the article, is that he's worried they'll try and do the same thing with "the S-Word" and he doesn't want to be remembered as the F and S guy. You can read the whole article at wsj.com if you have a subscription.

This is by far the most satisfying slang dictionary I've ever seen. The entries include obscure words and phrases that most people have never heard of, as well as common terms with all their subtle shades of meaning. For example, f*ck ("usually considered vulgar") exists as virtually every part of speech, and several pages are devoted solely to it. Definitions are straight forward, but the best part of the dictionary is the extensive usage quotes, given in chronological order. I also have volume II (H-O); it is just as good. I eagerly await volume III.

Oxford University press is currently undertaking the massive editorial work required to finish this ground-breaking four-volume set that was started more than 25 years ago. The third volume, covering the alphabetic range of P through Sk, is due to appear in March 2007. Volume IV, covering Sk through Z and including a bibliography of tens of thousands of items, is planned for two years later.(...)

I must agree with settimio biondi from Italy. Having purchased the first two volumes, we've been waiting for 7 years for P~Z. This is an excellent, comprehensive work. Hopefully, Oxford...or someone with a sense of responsibility...will finish the final volume.

Spectacular work, but....It is now 7 years that I have been waiting for this dictionary to be completed. I am now hearing that the third and last volume may not see light at all. The mere thought that Random House has brought its customers into a stupid situation like this is shocking. Not only it's a huge disappointment to its customers, but it's also a great loss to American lexicography. Does Random House think that this fiasco can me mended in the not too distant future? May we readers and customers expect a reply from Random House? What the hell.

Spectacular work, but....It is now 7 years that I have been waiting for this dictionary to be completed. I am now hearing that the third and last volume may not see light at all. The mere thought that Random House has brought its customers into a stupid situation like this is shocking. Not only it's a huge disappointment to its customers, but it's also a great loss to American lexicography. Does Random House think that this fiasco can me mended in the not too distant future? May we readers and customers expect a reply from Random House? What the hell.
Does anybody know whether the deal between Random House and a British publisher, aimed at publishing the third volume was finally made?

I'm an American slang bug and that's why I'm just chafing at the bit to browse next volumes of this undoubtedly the very best and most comprehensive and authoritative complete on-going dictionary of slang. A lot has been already said and written 'bout this work hence I'm lost for new words of appreciation. On the other hand, however, dear editors, mercy on us, you can't just now dump this big project halfway thru editing thus leaving us, all American slang lovers throughout the English-speaking world in the lurch. There's a glitter of hope, as I heard, to cooperate with Oxford University Press. OK! Go ahead and good luck then but let these words be soon followed by real actions. Sincerely Alex

We have been waiting for this dictionary for a long time. Specifically, since 1975 when Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner issued their second supplemented edition of the "Dictionary of American Slang."
Editor J.E. Lighter, a researcher at the University of Tennessee, is somewhat disparaging of Wentworth and Flexner, the only previous lexicographers to take a healthy swing at American slang. (I don't count H.L. Mencken, who compiled many lists, but not in a format that a working writer can use.)
Lighter faults their "looseness of definition, unpredictable allocation of citations and a certain historical naivete." Maybe, but their book had, and still has, the most important merit a dictionary can have -- it is useful.
Also, theirs goes through Z, which is more than Lighter can say in 2006, 12 years after his Vol. 1 came out and many more years than that since he began.
Also, Wentworth and Flexner's volume is wieldy. Lighter's dictionary has many excellencies, but handiness is not one of them.
Wentworth and Flexner covered the whole of American English in a small volume of two pounds, six ounces. Lighter covers one-third the ground in a massive folio of six pounds, one ounce.
Lighter is often, but not always, more comprehensive. Take bum.
W&F give this useful word 26 definitions in a page. Lighter gives 29 in three pages, but three of his usages have earliest dates since W&F's last effort. It looks like a draw, but it's not, quite.
W&F give a nice little essay on the finer gradations of meaning of bum (in its sense of vagabond); Lighter is less preachy on usage, letting the extensive quotations do that work for him. This is the approved method for serious work, but although Lighter's citations often seem repetitive, their length does not always ensure completeness, as we shall see.
W&F derive bum from the German bummler, idler, but Lighter appears to think this an example of historical naivete, finding bum sprung full-blown in 1864, without any certain antecedents. (In its sense of fundament, it goes back in English to at least 1387.)
Turn now to cracker. Lighter gives it nearly half a page, in the sense of "a backwoods Southern white person regarded as ignorant, brutal, loutish, bigoted etc.," tracing it to 1766. W&F does not have it at all.
Lighter is clearly ahead here, but there are problems with this definition.
First, it is politically correct but lexically incorrect. A cracker is not a white person but a white man. Like its synonyms redneck and woolhatter, it is never used of a woman.
Second, not one of the 31 citations even hints at a usage that would explain how the Atlanta professional baseball team in the old Sally League (slang for South Atlantic League; I will be interested to see if this makes it into Lighter's Vol. 3, if I live long enough to see it) came to be called the Crackers. Or how Georgians' and north Floridians' own nickname for themselves came to be crackers, the way people from Indiana call themselves Hoosiers.
Lighter does also give five other definitions of cracker: beans, a remarkable individual, dollar, a poor skier who often loses control and a light-skinned Negro.
Taken in all, Lighter has lifted the compilation of American salng to a new, much higher level -- except for Hawaiian American slang.
Except for go for broke, which is listed as "apparently originally Nisei or Hawaiian English," I cannot find any slang words from the Hawaiian dialect of Standard American -- even though some words in Standard Hawaiian have migrated into Slang English, like kahuna.
There are many definitions in Lighter of grind, for example, but none for the ways we in Hawaii use it as noun and verb (for eating). Chance um is missing, too, and give um and blahlah.
The absence of Hawaiian American Slang (Alaskan, too) is a serious fault, but on the whole the book is a corker ("a person or thing of extraordinary size, effectiveness, quality etc.," originally English slang traced to 1882 but brought into American by Mark Twain in 1889).

Browsing is a journey through life, times, places, cultures. Looking up often offers surprises. This book is a kick.

Enjoy the book, and use it frequently with co-workers! I first heard this THREE-VOLUME (??) set advertised in early 1994, and my wife purchased it as a gift. However, to date (Nov. 26, 1996) all local booksellers have NOT been able to provide me with the Second and Third Volumes. This is very frustrating and disappointing! With all the other publishers available, I now would have to look to someone other than Random House if I were to purchase today. Can anyone provide a solution to this problem? My friends are all tired of my cursing only going from A to G, and are hoping that my vocabulary will soon expand. HELP!! (Sorry, that word's in the second book.)