Irivine Welsh's novels contain some of the densest slang writing in fiction. Jonathon 'Mr Slang' Green ventures into the dark side of Scottish language... It is a good thing that Eric Partridge was spared Irvine Welsh. Not because the former was a bad lexicographer nor the latter a bad writer, but ... Read More...
Mr Slang
Happy New Year from all the Dabblers. To get you in the mood for tonight's celebrations, here's Mr Slang's very first dabble from the archives, all about being drunk... If I do a rough count of the main themes that inform my recently published Green’s Dictionary of Slang, I find – ... Read More...
Continuing last fortnight's theme, Mr Slang examines the lexicography of 'specialist' book titles, and uncovers a "grim commentary on the tropes of male excitement..." This is it, I promise. The last one. But pondering the verbose titles of the 19th century pornography, I could but compare them with modernity, or nearly ... Read More...
Jonathon Green takes a trip to the 'specialist' bookshops of The Backside of St Clements... All gone now. What you’re looking at above is the Australian High Commission (though didn’t that get knocked down too a year ago or so?). Like Fred and Rose’s lair at 25 Cromwell Street, Holywell Street had ... Read More...
We're delighted to welcome Dabbler legend Jonathon Green back to the site, with the first in an occasional series of reviews of current non-fiction... Geography Of The Marvellous Chet van Duzer - Sea Monsters on Medieval & Renaissance Maps 128 pp. British Library £20 This great and wide sea, wherein are things creeping innumerable, ... Read More...
Since his very first column for The Dabbler in January 2011, Jonathon Green has barely missed a Thursday post. But now, after some 138 posts and umpteen thousand words, we regret to say that Mr Slang has decided to relinquish his weekly duties. Everyone at The Dabbler heartily thanks him for ... Read More...
What is slang all about? Jonathon muses on stereotypes, in life and in the counter-language that holds up its dark mirror to life... I am in a cab. The cabbie asks what work I do. I explain that I write dictionaries. Dictionaries, that is, of slang. And the cabbie, who stands ... Read More...
Jonathon fibs you right in the claret-spout with his fambler, as he examines slang's obsession with fisticuffs... Unlike slang's women, slang's men do not scold. And nag? heaven forfend. Men shout. Loud, vain, futile. All that stuff. Gobshites, basically. But men also hit. How do I wallop thee, let me count the ... Read More...
It's holiday time, and Mr Slang is spending his summer constructing interactive timelines of popular terms for the penis. You ain't seen nothing like this before... It’s August. Holiday time, I gather. I had mine in June but no matter. My short-lived tan has faded and my mind is blank. Slang ... Read More...
Anyone fancy a 'curry te Kanawa'? Mr Slang enjoys a new lexicography of New Zealand words, even though it is a little clean for his tastes... Once upon a time there was the dictionary. It survives, of course, but not as we knew it, and those thick and squarish books are ... Read More...
