"No one knows where it comes from," admits Sheidlower.
#The first english dictionary of slang full
Did the expression, the Full Monty, start with World War II British Field Marshal Bernard Montgomery, who loved a large breakfast? Or an expanded version of a Spanish card game? The origins of other terms remain a mystery.
The word even appeared with its present meaning in Time magazine in 1963. "Phat," for example, makes its debut in the OED today as a slang term meaning cool.īut it has been African-American slang since at least the 1960s, OED researchers found. "Many terms are much older than you think they are," says Sheidlower. The dictionary contains some surprises for people who think they are using the latest, cutting-edge jargon. It’s a shame that so many very apt words fall out of common use over time, like blobber-lippd, which means having lips that are very thick, hanging down, or turning over and chounter, which is to talk pertly, and sometimes angrily. He says his job also gives him an excuse to watch a lot of action films, soap operas and quiz shows, to look for more new terms. The First English Dictionary of Slang, 1699. Simpson (John, not Homer) and his colleagues whittle that list down to the few that seem to have gotten a solid foothold in popular usage. Both words can be found in The First English Dictionary of Slang, originally published in 1699 as A New Dictionary of Terms, Ancient and Modern, of the Canting Crew by B.
"We have about 200,000 example sentences coming into the department each year." Contributors have included a Nobel laureate and an inmate at an insane asylum, among thousands of others. "The principle way we is to have readers look around the world for things that seem new or significant," says John Simpson, chief editor of the OED. It is the first complete revision of the dictionary since it was completed in 1928. The OED's staff of 50 editors is wading through popular culture looking for new words and usages that merit an entry, as part of its 8-year-old $55 million updating project.
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