Word: slang
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...Golden Honeymoon would seem an especially hazardous undertaking. Like many Lardner stories, this account of an elderly couple's Florida vacation is told in '20s slang by an inarticulate character. The narrator here is a gabby, boorish husband who never really grasps that he is describing a near fatal crisis in his 50-year marriage. As he prattles lightly about painful events, the gap between his words and deeds becomes the basis for a classic black comedy...
There is a sex problem here; a certain difficulty of gender, even regarding the slang. Standard record-biz patois for new talent on the rise is "breaking out." A quartet of plastic inflatable Teddy bears like the Knack, who came off the crackling short circuit of Los Angeles rock clubs and had a No. 1 album first time out this summer, are said to be breaking out in a big way. That message is clear, not just because of the size of their success but because they are all guys. Say that four women, Ellen Shipley, Carolyne Mas, Ellen Foley...
...Black psychologists have constructed a number of tests that depend on a knowledge of ghetto slang...
...Texas slang and an abrasive style produce a breakthrough...
...bore") to devote himself to publishing and writing. Though he once turned out a novel in a month for his Scholartis Press in London, he gave up fiction to make a profession of his passion: the study of words. Over five decades, he compiled 16 erudite lexicons devoted to slang, cliches and other aspects of the language; his last effort, A Dictionary of Catch Phrases (1977), contained 3,000 entries. "The Word King," as Critic Edmund Wilson dubbed him, savaged linguistic abuses (he found American sociopsychological jargon especially "pitiable") and saluted plain, popular usage. Language, he said,'"was created...