We are programmed to trust a dictionary, but should we? Jonathon Green - the leading lexicographer of English slang - advises that dictionaries should carry a lexical health warning... Lexicography is about demystifying, of cutting out the fanciful crap and aiming for some kind of truth. This is usually done on ... Read More...
About Author Profile: Jonathon Green
As conjunctivitis and a bewildering array of other eye diseases plague Dabbler Towers, Mr Slang considers the peepers... The five senses do not bulk overlarge in slang. Poets like them and prate accordingly; slang, being of a harder edge, prefers less subtlety. Compared to the vast lists pertaining to matters sexual, ... Read More...
Jonathan Meades - who gave an exclusive interview to The Dabbler earlier this year - has a new book out via Unbound - here, Jonathan Green reviews it... The gathering together of US farming families for the purpose of rolling newly cut logs, so heavy that a single family could not ... Read More...
Slang doesn't really do optimism, but as a one-off special to mark the nation's temporary mood of joy, here's Mr Slang's Alphabet of Admirability... I have eschewed what I term the O-word, but it is over now and I am emerging – decrepitude permitting – from behind my canapé, which is, ... Read More...
This week, a slang lexicographer's delight: the autobiography of a 19th century villain that contains a goldmine of criminal language... Like its standard, literary equivalent, the literature of slang has its canon and its classics. I have mentioned some of the greats – Taylor the Water Poet, George Ade, Surtees, Wodehouse ... Read More...
Slang loves sport, but Mr Slang does not. As he prepares to flee the Olympic-blighted capital, Jonathon fires a parting shot... ‘The Country Squire New Mounted’ The Country Squire to London came, And left behind his dogs and game; Yet finer sport he has in view, And hunts the hare and coney too. T. Rowlandson Pretty ... Read More...
Following Rio Ferdinand's Twitter troubles, Mr Slang examines the language of supposed race-betrayal... Choc-ice. Haven’t touched one since 1989 myself. Forty-one that very day, as it happened, and, hold on Mr G, just want to check your results. Black forest gateau, tiramisu, death by chocolate...the sweet trolley is as off-limits as ... Read More...
In which Mr Slang takes stroll through Great Wen, calls for Armageddon... Some Lord’s day. I know not which and care less for I have no time for man-made jacks-in-boxes and believe but in a single rule: that after A comes B and thence to C and thus is the tale ... Read More...
Arrogance, duplicitousness, treachery, sexual corruption and the tip-toeing gait of the flamenco dancer - Jonathon Green continues his series on English linguistic xenophobia with a visit to Spain... Sport being a locked room for which I have not the slightest interest in obtaining a key, my only comment vis-à-vis a recent ... Read More...
His soldier Tommy is one of the great English archetypes. But did Kipling invent or merely popularise him? Mr Slang investigates... Kipling, by allusion, has cropped up regularly in these posts. Enough of the oily rags. It is time for the engineer. Yet Kipling is not at first sight a particularly ‘slangy’ ... Read More...
