Path: ...!feeds.phibee-telecom.net!news.mixmin.net!eternal-september.org!feeder3.eternal-september.org!news.eternal-september.org!.POSTED!not-for-mail From: Ross Clark Newsgroups: sci.lang Subject: Eric Partridge's Dictionary of Slang is given a glowing review in the New York Times (23-5-1937) Date: Thu, 23 May 2024 23:57:06 +1200 Organization: A noiseless patient Spider Lines: 30 Message-ID: Reply-To: r.clark@auckland.ac.nz MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=utf-8; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Injection-Date: Thu, 23 May 2024 13:57:17 +0200 (CEST) Injection-Info: dont-email.me; posting-host="902b1c7c7fe76f32118adf5d8b47f658"; logging-data="1839606"; mail-complaints-to="abuse@eternal-september.org"; posting-account="U2FsdGVkX197+E5pme1uaL7wcj7Jr0QMBRfDki+M/Rs=" User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.0; rv:52.0) Gecko/20100101 Thunderbird/52.9.1 Cancel-Lock: sha1:JAp8DMnwABc8HRf4SvRzS1PfYQ8= Content-Language: en-GB X-Mozilla-News-Host: news://news.eternal-september.org:119 Bytes: 2295 "It might seem unusual to devote a day to a rave review of a book, but this was a very unusual book, and nobody -- least of all the author -- had expected it." Nice quote from the review, by Dilworth Faber (who?): "The lost words of the language have finally come to roost. The unmentionables are mentioned." Emphasis is on the fact that Partridge included all the "indecent" words, fully spelled out -- still illegal at that time under British obscenity laws. "Dilworth Faber...was himself planning a dictionary of American slang." It was never finished. Julie Coleman's history of slang dictionaries mentions that he was encouraged in this project by William Craigie, the OED editor who went to Chicago. No more than scraps about him online: 1909-1976? poet in the early 30s he was working on a "comprehensive history of Negro Art"... Ah well. Eric Partridge is much better documented and perhaps as interesting: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eric_Partridge "From 1923, he "found a second home", occupying the same desk (K1) in the British Museum Library (as it was then known) for the next fifty years."