Customer Reviews

Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, Vol. 2: H-O

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This is an indispensible book for writers and for anyone who loves words, but only if you're looking for something from A to O, since Random House dumped the project. Hope may be on the horizon, though. As reported in William Safire's On Lanuguage column (NYT Mag. 6/29/03), the National Endowment for the Humanities came up with a grant of $325,000 over two years to keep J.E. Lighter's project going, and Oxford University Press picked up the challenge. Oxford is now working out the contract details with Random House.

The Oxford University Press has picked up sponsorship of this project from Random House and hopes to release Volume III (P- partial S) in May 2007 and Volume IV (remainder S - Z) in 2008.

In the meantime we have Volumes I & II to enjoy.

I am an avid collector of dictionaries, and this is one of my favorites. It is an invauable reference, and fun to browse. The definitions are clear and, from my experience, accurate. The attempt to find the earliest references is impressive -- certainly the best of its kind, but it is not 100% accurate. No work of this type, which breaks much new ground and works so often from primary sources, could be completely accurate, but it it provides an invaluable foundation for future slang etymology. A truly awesome work. I check back monthly for volume III.

Volumes I and II comprise an impressive, indispensable reference for writers, word junkies, and the just plain curious. But where the devil is the danged, long-over Volume III!? There's lots of slang after the letter O. This outstanding reference, unfortunately, is still imcomplete. The publishers ought to be ashamed of themselves for getting us hooked, and then not delivering on the promised final volume.

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. More information can be found at the <a href="http://www.oup.com/us/collections/slang/?view=usa">Oxford University Press web site</a>. There you will find a <a href="http://www.us.oup.com/us/collections/slang/history/?view=usa">history of the project</a> and a long <a href="http://www.us.oup.com/us/collections/slang/history/amheritage.pdf">interview with Chief Editor Jonathan Lighter</a>. [This information was added by Grant Barrett, project editor of HDAS.]

Yes, a big SNAFU took place at Random House. In the unlikely case you guys don't know what SNAFU means, you could always look it up in the Random House Dictionary of American Slang. Unfortunately the third volume (containing entries under S) has not yet been published, so you must ask a learned fried to find out what the meaning of this expression is. But if you already own the first two volumes you are likely to be as disappointed (mild euphemism) as I am. Can anybody (maybe Random House itself?) tell or predict if and when the third volume will be published?
Men, this story is a true pain where you don't tell the ladies.

In 1997, when I received and reviewed this volume, a letter to the editor of the newspaper where I work used the word bimbo, which set off a long discussion among the editors.
What, exactly, does bimbo mean? How offensive is it? Can a man be a bimbo? If so, is the female of the species a bimba? A bimbette?
At such moments, a boy's best friend is a good slang dictionary. Unfortunately, all slang dictionaries are out of date, incomplete and somewhat speculative.
So we were not able to get answers to all our questions about bimbo. But we got more information from J.E. Lighter's "Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang" than from any other slang book -- almost three-quarters of a page, including references to bim as early as 1925, bimbo in 1918 and bimbette in 1982.
Of the five slang books on my desk, I still generally reach for Wentworth and Flexner's "Dictionary of American Slang" first. Though dated (1960), it's handier than Lighter's bulky volumes and it goes all the way through to z.
But after meeting my deadline, I usually make a beeline for the Random House for its more up-to-date and complete entries.
Both favorite dictionaries trace bim in some senses as far back as 1837. But bimbo in the current sense of something close to floozie gets a too-narrow reference in W&F as "prostitute; girl or woman who is promiscuous" and dated to about 1930.
Lighter carries that sense back to 1920 and cites 16 uses over the net 70 years that prove, if anything, that nobody agrees what bimbo really means. But imprecision is a feature of slang.
Volume one of Lighter, A-G, came out in 1994, so in 1997 I was anticipating having the complete dictionary by the end of the decade. No such luck, as other reviewers have related.
My one serious objection to volume one has not been corrected in volume two: This "American slang" dictionary does not include Hawaiian or Alaskan slang.
Huhu, which is current in Hawaii American slang (as well as being a standard word in Hawaiian), is not here, nor can I find any other Hawaii American slang, like kaukau.
Kahuna makes it in, but as surfer slang, not Hawaii American. And ice, for crystal methamphetamine, is listed as having first appeared in print and on television in 1989 in Mainland stories about Hawaii.
Otherwise, the lexicon is pretty extensive. There are 46 entries for "Irish this and that," all labeled offensive today except plain Irish (as in getting your Irish up) for fighting spirit.
At least seven refer to the white potato -- Irish apple, Irish applesauce, Irish apricot, Irish football, Irish grape, Irish lemon and Irish root, which certainly demonstrates that slang does not always express the vibrant imagination and creativity of the plain people.
A great part of the fun of a dictionary based on historical principles, like this one, is learning how language evolves. Just browsing through, I was surprised to learn that hog heaven goes back no further than 1944, though a 1968 birthdate for humongous is about what I would have guessed.
I did not know before that jerk, that indispensible word, is hardly a century old, though its predecessor jerkwater arrived as early as 1869. And its use for worthless person or dolt took a surprisingly long time to catch on. Its earliest printed use in that sense was 1919, but it was almost 20 years before America experienced a jerk explosion.
There are plenty -- choke, we would say in Hawaii American slang -- jerks at Random House.

I am just a Chemist and not into the language academic field at all. Also from abroad. But this project of compiling the American slang is so much a part of American culture that I do not understand why anybody finances vol. 3. Even the present government should do it. The existing two volumes are not just a dictionary; reading them is more like going through a novel. I enjoy them although incomplete.

I'm certainly one of the above, always have been. I have dictionaries, encyclopedias, and other reference books overflowing in my house. In some way it has always been that ability to just walk over to a bookshelf or lift off a table that source which will answer whatever top-of-mind question might linger.

On another level, I study pop culture for a living, but when I'm out of the office my mind drifts toward what the world might have been. I cringe at Hallmark Hall of Fame MOWs and their inaccurate stories of courage and love and other nonsense. I love reading Jim Thompson and David Goodis, Cormac McCarthy, EL Doctrow, Nelson Algren and others who either wrote of their reality or really dove into their subjects and fleshed them out with all the roughness of true life.

I've actually started an after dinner game with several of my friends. I take out these two first volumes and we alternate randomly opening the books and reading out the first word and definition we find, providing it hasn't been marked as read.

I really hope the next volume comes out soon. This is a phenomenal piece of work.

Someone at work used the term "jamoke", and we all scrambled to determine it's meaning. This provided the answer, after many other dictionarys had yielded nothing. Impressive work.