Word: slang
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Picking a ship, according to the Admiral, is like buying a hat. (In Navy slang, tentative ship designs are known as "spring styles.") Before the Navy decided on any one type of ship, the Bureau of Ships whipped up as many as ten different designs. After six or eight months of blueprint work, the designs were sent to the General Board, which eventually notified the Bureau what it fancied. The time between contract plans and working plans used to be from 15 to 18 months. Under Robinson, the time was cut to less than a year. Ably assisting...
...AMERICAN THESAURUS OF SLANG-Lester V. Berrey and Melvin Van den Bark-Crowell...
Lester V. Berrey has been at work on this absorbing, 1,174-page thesaurus since 1931. He got special checking help from such experts as Bing Crosby (on music), Variety's Jack Edward (entertainment slang), John A. Leslie of Ohio State Prison on the language of tramps and the underworld. His collaborator, Nebraskan Philologist Melvin Van den Bark, worked out the main outlines of classification and groupings of words. In general these follow Roget but they culminate in 430 highly readable pages on "Special Slang" of various trades, sports and regions. That section alone will probably help more third...
Everything, it seems at first, is in this book; such ghoulish, semi-slang tintypes as "God's image cut in ebony" (for Negro); such beautifully graphic trade terms as the miner's "snow" (for the sifting of earth presaging a cave-in), the ballplayer's "floater" (for a slow ball), the prostitute's "pivot" (for solicitation from a window). Practically all the unmailable words turn up, along with a tremendous set of their variants and embellishments. So does the surrealist language of drug addicts, the high-heeled dialect of perverts, the likable archaisms of lumberjacks (they...
...complete job on U.S. slang is beyond human compass. "God-box" is given for Church but not for organ. "Profile" is curiously absent from journalistic slang. The Hollywood section fails to include "ootchimagootchi" (hot talk as an obbligato to Latin lovemaking), though it does give "wrinkle" (an actress' mother...