Wednesday, February 02, 2011

CABOB: "a loin of mutton roasted with an onyon betwixt each joint"

At the TLS, James Sharpe on Jonathan Green's dictionary of slang and one of its early precursors:
Slang relating to sex, of course, figures prominently. Taking a non-exhaustive list from the first two letters of the alphabet, we find the penis being referred to as Aaron’s rod, Adam’s arsenal, arse-wedge, augur, bacon bazooka, bald-headed bastard, and bayonet.
Alas, there is not yet a copy of Green's Dictionary of Slang in the Columbia library system, I suppose it is not yet actually released in the U.S. - I will have to console myself with The A-Z of Nuclear Jargon for now...

(Really I want my own copy!)

5 comments:

  1. Have you read Green's earlier slang dictionaries? Are they enjoyable?

    Some of these issues made me think of that recent Michael Wood article about Carroll/Joyce -- esp. Croydon facelifts are a little like borogoves and the "arbitrariness of the sign." I was also reminded of an old Craig Raine essay about swearing and translation, http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=5254

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  2. I am very skeptical of these slang lists - unless he has documented usage? I reviewed a book about breasts once, that had about two pages of breast references, and many of them were highly implausible. "Bacon bazooka"? Really?

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  3. The book is coming out in the US on Valentine's Day. It is currently on offer at amazon.co.uk at a bargain price; I don't know what amazon.com plan.

    @Becca: It is is, like the OED, 'on historical principles'. Thus the 110,000 entries are underpinned by 415,000 usage citations, culled from a database of c. 575,000.

    JG

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  4. Jonathan Green is blogging at The Dabbler, "a multi-contributor culture blog":

    http://thedabbler.co.uk/author/jonathon-green/

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  5. Sorry, that should be Jonathon Green.

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