A Dictionary of the Underworld

Fülszöveg

A GLANCE through the list of Abbreviations
and Principal Short References of this book
is enough both to whet the appetite of the curious
and to satisfy the demands of the academically
punctilious. Eric Partridge's enthusiasm for the
richness of language in all its variety and idiosyn-
crasy has led him, in his research for this book,
into doing much legwork down some of the most
obscure and entangled lanes of the lexicographi-
cal landscape. Everything from John Awdeley's
The Fraternitye ofVacabondes of 1575, through The
Canting Crew by 'B.E.' in 1698 and J. Dun-
combe's Sinks of London Laid Open in 1848, to
such 20th century masterpieces as Detective
Fiction Weekly, April 1934 and The Police Journal^
March 1943. His more academic references
include Elisha Coles' English Dictionary of 1676,
Humphrey Potter's Dictionary of 1797,^4 Diction-
ary of American English (1936-42) and various
works on the slang of Australia and New Zealand
together with help from the... Tovább

Fülszöveg

A GLANCE through the list of Abbreviations
and Principal Short References of this book
is enough both to whet the appetite of the curious
and to satisfy the demands of the academically
punctilious. Eric Partridge's enthusiasm for the
richness of language in all its variety and idiosyn-
crasy has led him, in his research for this book,
into doing much legwork down some of the most
obscure and entangled lanes of the lexicographi-
cal landscape. Everything from John Awdeley's
The Fraternitye ofVacabondes of 1575, through The
Canting Crew by 'B.E.' in 1698 and J. Dun-
combe's Sinks of London Laid Open in 1848, to
such 20th century masterpieces as Detective
Fiction Weekly, April 1934 and The Police Journal^
March 1943. His more academic references
include Elisha Coles' English Dictionary of 1676,
Humphrey Potter's Dictionary of 1797,^4 Diction-
ary of American English (1936-42) and various
works on the slang of Australia and New Zealand
together with help from the staff of newspapers
in South Africa and Canada. Eric Partridge is
nothing if not thorough.
In A Dictionary of the Underworld, the author of
such standard reference classics as Usage and
Ahusage, Origins and A Dictionary of Slang, here
turns his eye and wit on the mysterious area
defined by dictionaries as 'cant', or as Partridge
describes it 'the vocabularies of crooks, criminals,
racketeers, beggars and tramps, convicts, the
commercial underworld, the drug traffic, the
white slave traffic, and spivs'. This exotic com-
pilation is a book not only to be referred to for
'inside information', but to be browsed through
at leisure for its mind-boggling and often hila-
rious revelations from a world few of us (one
hopes!) ever explore at first hand Vissza