Book Review: New Partridge Dictionary of Slang & Unconventional English

7 April 2006

Two weeks ago I received my copy of The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, edited by Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, from Amazon.com. This is an update of the work started by lexicographer Eric Partridge (1894-1979). First published in 1937, his slang dictionary was revised six times during his life and once by Paul Beale after his death. This new work is essentially a new reference rather than just a revision and updating of the earlier work. One can still see the influence of the Partridge originals in some of the entries, but it is quite different in research, scope, and presentation.

Partridge had his idiosyncrasies and quirks. Some of his research was sloppy. But his dictionary and other works are still valuable references. This was because Partridge filled a void by being the only available, comprehensive review of slang. In other words, he was often the only game in town. The Oxford English Dictionary long ignored slang. This has been corrected in more recent editions and additions, but updating the vast OED takes so long that this early prejudice against slang lives on in the absence of many needed entries. Other general dictionaries simply didn’t have the space to address their slang entries with the thoroughness that Partridge did and few slang researchers were willing to attempt to duplicate the monumental effort that Partridge put into his work. More recently, others have taken up the task and Partridge’s exclusive hold on the domain of slang has diminished somewhat. But Partridge still often fills a void. For example, Jonathan Lighter’s Historical Dictionary of American Slang is a wonderful resource for American slang beginning A through O, but if you want to look up a word from elsewhere in the world or from the back end of the alphabet you are out of luck, at least until that dictionary is completed. This leaves us with Partridge, for all its faults.

Dalzell and Victor superbly sum up these faults with Partridge’s original in their preface to the new dictionary:

His protocol for alphabetizing was quirky. His dating was often problematic. His etymologies at times strayed from the plausible to the fanciful. His classification by register (slang, cant, jocular, vulgar, coarse, high, low, etc.) was intensely subjective and not particularly useful. Furthermore, his early decision to exclude American slang created increasingly difficult problems for him as the years passed and the influence of American slang grew. Lastly, Partridge grew to lose the ability to relate to the vocabulary he was recording. In 1937, Partridge was a man of his time: but the same could no longer be said in 1960.

Dalzell and Victor seem to have avoided all these problems and this new edition of Partridge is all the better for it:

• Their dating is precise, based on actual citations, not on estimation as Partridge was wont to do.

• Their etymologies, when given, are solid or clearly labeled when not.

• There is no classification by register and few usage notes.

• They have widened the scope of the work to include slang from all over the English-speaking world.

• They show no evidence of being out of touch with current slang.

It’s been a while since I’ve bought a new language reference book and I was excited when this one arrived. My eagerness wore off, though, as I perused it. It’s not that it is a poor reference–I’m sure I will use it often–but there are a few problems with the work that fall into two categories.

The first category are things I, personally, don’t like about the work. These aren’t deficiencies and I understand why Dalzell and Victor made these editorial choices. It’s just that they make the work less valuable to me. One is that this is not a historical dictionary. The editors make no attempt to trace the development and usage of a term over time. Etymologies, other than a date of first known use, are not usually given and the usage citations are illustrative rather than comprehensive. Also, only terms used 1945-present are included. Why they limited the scope of the dictionary in this way is perfectly understandable. I just wish they did not have to. Others with different purposes will not find these issues a problem.

The second category, non-systemic problems in individual entries, is more vexing. Some individual entries display deficiencies that raise doubts about the thoroughness of the editors.

I noticed one as soon as I opened the book. It’s my habit to first look up the whole nine yards anytime I encounter a new slang reference. I can get a good feel for a work by the way they handle this phrase. But stunningly, the phrase is not included, not under whole, not under nine, not under yards–and knowing Partridge’s penchant for odd alphabetization, I even looked under the. The phrase is simply not in the dictionary. It’s not that the editors have deliberately chosen to exclude catchphrases; there are plenty of others in the dictionary. How any slang reference that includes American terms from 1945 onwards could omit the whole nine yards is mind boggling.

As I have recently been updating the Letter B on wordorigins.org, I looked up most of the B words on The Big List in the new dictionary. The phrase Bob’s your uncle is also missing. I know the phrase is still current; I’ve heard it in the wild myself. Partridge’s Dictionary of Catchphrases has a fairly lengthy entry on it, so one would think it would be considered for inclusion here, but evidently not.

Another B deficiency is in the entry for black box, meaning a piece of avionics hardware. The dictionary marks it as an American usage dating to 1945, although the OED contains 1945 citations from both the RAF and the US Air Force. So this one is clearly mislabeled.

While Dalzell and Victor have avoided guesswork in etymologies, they state that the phrase in like Flynn was "originally a reference to the legendary sexual exploits of actor Errol Flynn" and give a date of 1945, the date of the earliest citation in the HDAS. The phrase has been antedated to 1940 by Barry Popik and available in the American Dialect Society e-mail archive. Missing an antedating of a few years would normally not be a critical error, but in this case these antedatings are key to understanding the etymology. The clearly disprove that the phrase got its start with the actor’s acquittal for statutory rape, which is often given as the original reference–although to be fair not by Dalzell and Victor. More importantly, the antedates indicate that the Flynn in the phrase is probably just nonsense that rhymes, in like Flynn and out like Stout and not a reference to the actor or anyone in particular.

And I have found one example of political subjectivity in an entry that compromises the scholarly objectivity of the work. The entry for chickenhawk, meaning a person who advocates for a war but refuses military service, includes the following extraneous political commentary, "virtually every member of the US government that supported the 2003 invasion of Iraq avoided active military service in Vietnam during their youth." There is no other commentary on the word and given that usage citations go back to the 1980s, this is not intended as etymological commentary. Worse still, two of the five citations are anti-Republican political commentary on the 2003 war that, amazingly enough for "usage" citations, do not include the term chickenhawk. One uses the constituent elements, but not the term itself, in a very different context. ("What do you get when you cross a chicken and a hawk? A Quayle.") The second does not even use elements of the word at all, but is simply a list of Republican politicians and pundits who did not serve in the military. This last contorts the definition of "usage citation" out of all recognition. (So you understand my objection, I am in complete sympathy with the political viewpoint expressed in the entry. I just think it has no place in a linguistic reference.)

To be fair, any work of this magnitude will have errors and omissions and editors and editorial assistants sometimes get carried away and include inappropriate opinions. The problem is the rapidity with which I turned up these. I had barely cracked the book open when I started discovering them. It makes me wonder if by happenstance I stumbled on the few deficiencies in the work shortly after first consulting it, or if they are representative of a larger number of ones yet to be discovered.

On the whole, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang looks to be a fairly solid reference. But I can’t help having the nagging suspicion that this, like the earlier editions of Partridge, is one that I will consult because there is no other.

Hardcover, 2400 pages (2 vols.), Routledge, December 2005, $175.00

General Knowledge

31 March 2006

If you listen to the television news long enough, you will hear someone address the Attorney General of the United States as General Gonzales. This usage always grates on my ear. The Attorney General is not a military officer and there is something unsettling about the chief law enforcement officer of a democracy assuming military pretensions. But as much as I dislike this particular form of address, the linguist in me recognizes that it is probably an inevitable development in the language.

The addressing of the attorney general as "general" is relatively recent, only becoming a practice when Janet Reno held the position from 1993-2001, during the Clinton administration. The problem with this form of address is that the general in the title functions as an adjective, denoting that the holder of the office is empowered to act in all cases to which the state is a party. The attorney general has general legal authority in all matters and the scope of his or her authority is not limited. The attorney general’s antithesis would be an attorney special or attorney particular, legal terms that are not used much today.

This is also why the plural of attorney general is attorneys general. The inflected s appears on the noun, not the adjective. Although more and more one sees attorney generals, indicating that people are starting to see the general as a noun or, at the least, as the title as a whole serving as a noun. This is only natural. The form noun-adjective is not a common one in English, where the modifier usually comes before the noun, adjective-noun.

This happened once before with a general modifier. Yes, the military title once had the form of noun-adjective too. The first general officer was the capteyn generall, an officer who had authority over the other captains, or commanders, in an army; in other words, the commander-in-chief. This term dates to 1514 and is a lift from the French, who used the rank captain général.

By 1576, the captain was being dropped from the title and superior officers were simply being addressed as general. But like the modern shift in the use of attorney general, the change from captain general to general was not instantaneous. That same year also sees the adjective general moving to its accustomed place in the front of the noun, generall Capytayne.

And captain was not the only noun being modified. There were sergeant generals (1579), colonel generals (1595), and sergeant major generals (c.1595). This last was further clipped to major general (1633). Except for the last, these titles have all gone by the wayside, at least in the English speaking world. (Some foreign ranks are translated as colonel general; the Russian army, for instance, has colonel generals). These titles were all used to denote high ranking officers without much regard for how they ranked with each other. The rigid rank structure that we are familiar with today did not exist four hundred years ago and all of these titles were used to denote officers of similar rank.

Two that are slightly different are lieutenant general and brigadier general. The former was adopted from the French in 1589 and was used to denote the deputy of a general officer. And today, this practice is preserved in the ranking of lieutenant general directly below that of a general.

It is sometimes claimed that a lieutenant general outranks a major general because the latter was originally a sergeant major general, and lieutenants outrank sergeants major (another title where the adjective follows the noun). This is bunk. The modern grades of rank are simply historical accident and there is no deeper logic to the comparative ranks.

The term brigadier general arose because that officer is in command of a brigade. The shorter form brigadier is a bit older, dating to 1678, while brigadier general does not appear until 1690. The shorter form brigadier is used in Britain, but not in the US military. Originally, the brigadier was simply the senior colonel in the brigade, commanding because of his seniority and not because he outranked the others. In this way, the rank is analogous to the naval commodore, who is the senior captain in a fleet of ships, a temporary position. In modern times, however, the rank has become official and is the lowest rank of general officer.

So there you have it. Attorney General Gonzales is not really a general, although it appears that those who hold that position will increasingly be addressed as general. Let’s just hope that attorneys general don’t start wearing uniforms, like the surgeons general do. (Ironically, the surgeon general wears a naval uniform.)

For those without familiarity with military ranks, here’s a bit of trivia.
The modern grades of general in the United States military are brigadier general (1 star), major general (two stars), lieutenant general (three stars), and general (4 stars). Their naval counterparts are rear admiral (lower half), rear admiral (upper half), vice admiral, and admiral. Both ranks of rear admiral wear two stars, which upsets their brigadier general peers in the other services who only get to wear one.

At various times, there have been two higher ranks. The post of General of the Armies of the United States was created by Congress in 1799, but it was never filled. George Washington had only been given the rank of lieutenant general. For most of the existence of the United States, the highest military rank was major general. During the Civil War, Ulysses S. Grant was given the rank of lieutenant general, the first man to hold the rank since Washington. After the war, Grant was given the rank of General of the Army and took to wearing four stars–the first US military commander to do so. When Grant became president, William T. Sherman and then Philip H. Sheridan were subsequently appointed to the rank. The rank was abolished upon Sheridan’s death in 1888. Both Sherman and Sheridan wore the insignia of two stars with the arms of the United States in between.

Following World War I, the post of General of the Armies of the United States was finally filled by John J. Pershing, who had commanded the American Expeditionary Force during the war. He held the rank until his death in 1948. In 1976, Washington was posthumously elevated to this rank.

During the Second World War, the rank of General of the Army was revived. Four men were appointed to the post in December 1944:

• George C. Marshall, Army Chief of Staff

• Douglas MacArthur, commander in the Southwest Pacific

• Dwight D. Eisenhower, commander in Europe, and

• Henry H. Arnold, Chief of Staff of the Army Air Forces (in 1947, he became General of the Air Force, the only man to have held that rank)

Following the war, Omar Bradley was appointed the rank in 1950, the last man to be given the honor. Each of these men wore the insignia of five stars.

There is a myth that the title of General of the Army was chosen instead of the European counterpart of Field Marshal because George C. Marshall did not want to be known as Marshal Marshall. There may be some element of truth to this, but the primary reason is undoubtedly the historical connection.

The naval counterpart to General of the Army is Fleet Admiral. Only four men have held this position, all during or just after WWII:

• William D. Leahy, advisor to President Roosevelt

• Ernest J. King, Chief of Naval Operations

• Chester W. Nimitz, commander in the Central Pacific, and

• William F. Halsey

Bloody Hell

17 March 2006

It seems that British television has banned a new Australian tourism ad campaign for using the phrase "bloody hell."

The ad, which pitch the sights to see and activities to do in Australia, ends with a bikini-clad woman asking "so where the bloody hell are you"? Evidently British television censors deemed the ad too offensive.

The ad still runs in movie theaters and a print version is also running in Britain. The ad is running on American television without controversy.

Tourism Australia, the organization that created the ad, is reveling in the ban. Scads of Britons, hearing of ban are flocking to the internet to view it. As is typical with such censorship, the ban is boosting the ad’s appeal and success.

"Bloody" has traditionally been a very offensive word in Britain. The 1914 London opening of George Bernard Shaw’s Pygmalion was scandalous as Eliza Doolittle utters the phrase "not bloody likely" in the third act. In recent decades, the word has lost much of its offensive character in Britain and is often heard on British TV.

In Australia, the word is only the mildest of oaths, more an intensifier than anything else. In the US, the word has little currency, but where it does it is not considered offensive at all.

Beyonce: Budding Linguist?

17 March 2006

From "Beyoncé’s Boost," The Sunday Times, Perth, Australia, 9 March 2006, by Justine Parker and wires:

Bootylicious, the term coined by the former Destiny’s Child star for her own dangerous curves - and made famous by the hit single of the same name - will reportedly be added to the dictionary.

But the Naughty Girl singer is not too impressed by her newfound status as a wordsmith.

“I’m not very proud of that. It’s in the dictionary - it’s crazy,” she said to Britain’s TV Hits magazine.

The 24-year-old, who is famous for her hot hip-shaking in film clips for songs such as Crazy In Love, says she would have stuck it out and put more thought into the term if she had known it would be recorded in the lexicon.

“I wrote the song, but I wish there was another word I could have come up with if I was going to have a word in the dictionary,” she said to the pop mag.

The budding linguist, who is dating rap king Jay-Z, hasn’t yet had a chance to see if the dictionary’s definition is by the book, but she has offered her own spin on the word.

“I don’t know what it says in the dictionary but my definition is beautiful, bountiful and bounce-able,” she said.

Stories about Beyoncé Knowles’s coining of bootylicious have been appearing in English-language newspapers around the world of late. Now, I know better than to expect deep, linguistic scholarship from news reporters who write about pop stars and their music. But there are so many things wrong with the articles like the one quoted above that I just have to speak up.

First, Ms. Knowles did not coin the term bootylicious.

Second, it is not a recent addition to the Oxford English Dictionary, although it may be a recent addition to other dictionaries.

Third, there is no such thing as an "official" word.

Fourth, what in the heck is "the dictionary", in some articles given as "the English dictionary"?

And fifth, there is rampant plagiarism here as these stories all contain virtually the same wording, but no credit to a wire service or other source is given (although some of the stories, like the one quoted here, credit unspecified "wires").

And I won’t even bother to complain about the description of Ms. Knowles as a "budding linguist." That’s just the writer being playful. Besides, the earliest versions of the story use the term "stunning star" instead, with the change to "budding linguist" happening in the last week or so.

Did Beyoncé coin bootylicious? The answer is no, as any reporter who spent 30 seconds looking up the term in the online OED would find out. The Destiny’s Child single of that name came out in 2001, but the term, meaning sexually attractive, especially having an attractive rump, has been in use since at least 1994. The earliest citation is the OED is from the Lewiston, (Idaho) Morning Tribune from 17 January of that year. Now, by the time a hip-hop term appears in an Idaho newspaper, it must be pretty mainstream. It is all but certain that the term was in widespread use well before 1994. Undoubtedly, Beyoncé’s song helped popularize the term, but there is no way she invented it. There is even earlier sense of bootylicious, meaning bad or weak, dating to at least 1992. And the root word booty, meaning sex, dates back to the 1920s.

Now it’s common for people to mistake the first citation in a dictionary for a term’s coinage. Rarely is the earliest citation the first use of a term. Rather, it’s the first use that the lexicographers could find. The OED, for example, includes 85 first citations from Mark Twain, including lunkhead (Huckleberry Finn, 1884), Chinawoman (Innocents at Home, 1872), reminiscing (Autobiography, before 1910), and mossbacked (Letters, 1889). Twain was probably not the first to use any of these words. Instead, he is simply (one of) the first significant writers to use the words, but because he is Mark Twain, his uses of the terms have survived and come to the attention of lexicographers. There were countless non-famous people who used these words before Twain. Even if the first citation in the OED had been from the Beyoncé song, it would still probably not be her invention.

So has bootylicious been recently added to "the dictionary"? The OED has included it since September 2004. Why news reports are just getting around to noticing it now is a bit of a mystery. Perhaps it has recently been added to another dictionary. But if that’s the case, the articles’ use of "the dictionary" is maddeningly unspecific.

Which brings me to my third and fourth complaints. Now, I don’t expect newspaper reporters, especially those that write articles about Ms. Knowles, and their editors to be familiar with the ins and outs of linguistics. But it is not too much to expect that those who make a living by writing have a basic knowledge of the fundamental tools of the trade. To wit, what a dictionary is and how to use it.

First there was the aforementioned failure to do a basic fact check. Now, there is a claim that there is some sort of "official" list of approved English words. Reporters should know this is not the case without even asking. And there is the failure to cite which dictionary has recently added the term. Any professional writer should be aware that there are many different dictionaries and you a good writer is specific when referring to one. At least they didn’t use the term Webster’s. (For those new to the newsletter, the term Webster’s is not trademarked and anyone is free to call their dictionary Webster’s. Many different dictionaries do. Some, like Merriam-Webster are excellent sources; others are less so. Referring to Webster’s is utterly meaningless.)

Finally, there is the plagiarism in these articles. This is what I find most astounding. How any professional news organization could tolerate this is just amazing. Doesn’t anyone remember Jayson Blair and Stephen Glass? Those scandals weren’t that long ago.

Now, I’m sure you’re saying "calm down, Dave; it’s just a silly little article about a pop star and a slang term." On one level that is true. The story and its errors are insignificant. But it is an indicator of a much deeper problem that runs to the heart of edited journalism–professionalism and editorial review.

Newspaper readership is declining and all sorts of professional news organizations are wondering how to deal with the competition from bloggers and other citizen journalists. The problem is that amateur writers, working alone and from home (and often in their pajamas) are turning out news stories that are every bit as good as those coming from professional news organizations. (And often better–the pajamahadeen, at least, are usually scrupulous about citing their sources.)

If professional journalism is to survive, it must rely on its one advantage–editors. Fact checking, multiple (preferably non-anonymous) sources, and rigid adherence to editorial standards are a must, even in silly little stories about pop stars and slang. If one can’t trust your local newspaper to get basic facts right, why pay for it? One might as well rely on that anonymous person on the internet–they’re just as likely as the newspaper to be right.

How Words Make It Into "The Dictionary"

10 March 2006

A question that I get asked with some frequency is I’ve invented a new word. How do I go about getting it in "the dictionary"?

The questioner wants to get credit and fame for coining a term. Almost invariably, I have to disappoint them; their word usually has little chance of ever making it into a dictionary.

So how does a word get into the dictionary? The simple answer is that the editors of a particular dictionary must deem it worthy of inclusion. There is no organization that officially admits words into the English language. Our language is a very democratic one and we admit any word that people actually use. But whether or not a word makes it into a dictionary is another question and the lexicographers of each dictionary are the gatekeepers for entry into that work.

So what are the criteria that lexicographers use to determine if a word is "worthy" of inclusion in their dictionary? The criteria vary from dictionary to dictionary, but generally are something like the following:

Is the term used by a number of different people? If the term is in widespread use, it will probably be included. Words that are rarely used are less likely to be included. Exceptions might be made for rarely used words that appear in significant works of literature.

Has the term been used for an extended period of time? Many (perhaps most) words are invented and then die a quick death. Dictionaries are less likely to include newly coined words because chances are they will be gone by the time the dictionary is actually published. Lexicographers will wait a few years to see if the word is still around when the next edition is being prepared.

Does the term appear in significant works of literature? If the word is used by a famous writer, it is more likely to be included. There are many examples of words appearing in the dictionary that haven’t been used by anyone except a single, famous writer. This isn’t snobbery, but rather practicality. If it is used by a famous writer, there are bound to be people read the work in question and look up the word to see what it means.

Is the term relevant to the dictionary’s audience? Believe it or not, dictionaries are usually aimed at particular audiences. Desktop and, even more so, paperback dictionaries are intended for people who need to look up a term quickly. These tomes will tend to include current, commonly used words over archaic, seldom found ones. Larger dictionaries tend to include more obscure terms. Some dictionaries have a distinct literary bent. Others seek to document slang, jargon, or regional uses. American dictionaries, as one might expect, tend to focus on American usages, British on British ones, Australian dictionaries on terms from downunder, etc.

Is the term highly technical or used only by a specific subset of the population? If it is, it is less likely to be included. Unless of course, the dictionary specializes in the jargon of the group in question. Medical dictionaries, for example, include lots of terms used by doctors that do not appear in general dictionaries.

Is the term a proper name? Some dictionaries omit proper names.

Is there room to include it? Finally, lexicographers must make a judgment call on how the word ranks with other candidates for inclusion. There is never enough room to include every word, so some words don’t make the cut because they are deemed less important than others. Even online dictionaries, which are not constrained by space limitations, do have limits on time. The lexicographers simply don’t have time to research every word they come across and so they prioritize.

So can you suggest a word for inclusion? The answer for some dictionaries is yes. The best dictionaries actively seek help from the public, but only certain types of help are wanted. First, check a number of different dictionaries, including, if you have access, the Oxford English Dictionary. If the term appears in one or more, there is little point in submitting it to those that don’t include it. Lexicographers do check rival dictionaries to see what is included there. If the term is not in one dictionary, it was probably omitted because of editorial policy or the editors know about it and it will be in the next edition.

And lobbying for a word’s inclusion will not help--in fact, it will probably hurt its chances for inclusion as the editors will likely dismiss you as a crank. The best bet is to send the term to the dictionary, accompanied by verifiable citations of it actually being used, and just see what happens. The citations should cover a variety of sources and come from a period covering several years at least. Include the term, quotes from a number of sources that use the term, and enough bibliographic information for each source so that the editors can find it easily.

And what is a verifiable source? Simply put, the lexicographers are not going to take your word for it. They want to be able to see where and how the word is being used for themselves. That means the word has to be published, either in print, on the web, or in some recorded media that is accessible to researchers. What about oral sources? The trouble is that oral uses are nearly impossible to verify. You might include one or two, so long as you provide a specific date, the speaker, and the location and as long as there are other, written citations as well. Please, don’t just say "my grandmother used this all the time" or "my best friend said this thirty years ago in high school."

So where do you send this information? To contribute to the Oxford English Dictionary, consult http://www.oed.com/readers/research.html for submission criteria and contact information. Merriam-Webster maintains an Open Dictionary online that you can submit entries to. It’s at http://www3.merriam-webster.com/opendictionary/index.php. And the folks that created Wikipedia also run the Wiktionary and you can craft entries for that yourself at http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/Main_Page. Keep in mind that The Open Dictionary and the Wiktionary are not scholarly works, although professional lexicographers do consult them for ideas and evidence. Most of what appears in these open dictionaries is junk, but there are some nuggets of gold to be found there.

If a word is in the dictionary, does it do any good to send in a citation? Yes, if the citation is using the term in a way different than the definition given or it is used in a particular period. Lexicographers write their definitions based on how a word is used, so a new or different sense of the word can lead to a secondary definition. Also, if the word is used earlier or later than it has otherwise been known to, or during a period where the dictionary is lacking citations, then this can be helpful. Also, evidence of a regional or jargon term being used outside its normal habitat can also be helpful.

Finally, will you get credit? Well, if you submit to Merriam-Webster’s Open Dictionary or the Wiktionary, you can see your submission on the web. But that’s about it. If you are a very active contributor to the OED, you may get a mention on the contributors list, but you won’t get public credit for a specific submission. You don’t do this kind of thing for credit, but rather for the love of language.