Green’s Dictionary Of Slang, Filth and Rick Astley

I received (nay, I demanded with menaces!) a copy of the new three volume Green’s Dictionary Of Slang from my dearest beloved as a Christmas present. Unfortunately, due to other commitments related to the unfortunate necessity of earning hard cash, I have not yet had the chance to study it in depth.

I shall therefore defer giving my considered opinion on this mighty oeuvre until a later date. In the meantime, you may want to take a look at Colin MacCabe’s review in the New Statesman. Apart from his views on the Dictionary itself, MacCabe also provides a few interesting titbits on Mr Green. For some reason, I had formed a picture of Jonathon Green as a dusty academic who, when he’s not researching Anglo-Saxon epic verse or High German alliterative poetry, gravitates towards the dark library cellars containing learned tomes of historical smut. So I was surprised to discover that Mr Green had formerly written for such academic journals as Rolling Stone, International Times and Oz and his previous publications includes such eminent titles as The Big Book of Filth and The Big Book of Bodily Functions.

This heartens me greatly. Speaking as the writer of such fine works as The Mega-pop Trivia Quiz Book, the Bruce Willis Special Edition Poster Magazine and The Pet Shop Boys Mega Mix Annual (many of which are still available from Amazon sellers) and also as the publisher of 18 Rated Magazine (banned by Mssrs W H Smith and all good newsagents) I feel in good company. Indeed, I see that Mr Green was employed by the Felix Dennis publishing company so it is entirely possible that we have passed upon the stairs at some time or another. I used to edit a magazine (The PC Buyer’s Guide) published by Dennis and I’ve been a columnist and reviewer for various other Felix Dennis magazines too.

Ah, if only I had devoted my life to the study of vulgarity, perhaps I too might have ascended to the heights of Jonathon Green! Alas, I remain but an amateur of the vulgar tongue. So while my best chance at everlasting fame is, perhaps, my celebrated ‘1988 Rick Astley Special’, Jonathon Green has given the world his wonderful dictionary. O! the cruel twists of fate!

Green's Dictionary of Slang - from raspberry to rannygazoo

I have the Partidge Dictionary and I have the Cassell Dictionary. Now, however, it looks as though the new gold standard in dictionaries of slang will be the new three-volume Green's Dictionary. Writing in The Telegraph, Jeremy Noel-Tod (a contributor to the dictionary) describes how it was compiled from a variety of sources including the works of P G Wodehouse:

Training began with a pile of early PG Wodehouse novels. These related the adventures of Psmith, the man about town who revelled in such phrases as “last night’s rannygazoo” several years before Bertie Wooster began to bounce them off the silver-plated English of Jeeves.

Rannygazoo (“nonsense; irrelevant, irritating activity”) was an easy spot. And because Wodehouse is full of such exuberance, marking up the books seemed a breeze. I remember my disappointment when I learnt that I was regularly missing useful citations.

When you begin to study it, much more familiar language reveals itself as slang. A few pages on in the new dictionary, for example, Wodehouse yields a citation for the “coarse, dismissive, jeering noise” that most people would call a “raspberry”. As the definition indicates, it doesn’t have another name – I had always dimly thought of it as a more fruity sort of “rasp”. But it actually derives from rhyming slang, where phrases are often shortened to exclude the rhyme that reveals the word intended – and, in this case, the thing imitated (“raspberry tart”).

I would love to have a copy of Green's Dictionary. As it costs almost £300, however, I may have to do without - unless some kind Bertie Wooster-type Aunt decides to buy her beloved nephew a copy for Christmas, that is....