Odd Job Man: Some Confessions of a Slang Lexicographer - Couverture rigide

Green, Jonathon

Couverture rigide

ISBN 10 : 022409758X ISBN 13 : 9780224097581

Editeur : Jonathan Cape, 2014

Synopsis

For thirty years Jonathon Green has been collecting slang – the indefinable language of the gutter, the brothel, the jail, the barroom – producing a succession of dictionaries, most recently the three-volume Green's Dictionary of Slang, that have been recognised as the most comprehensive and authoritative ever compiled. In this fascinating memoir Green reveals that he first began collecting slang in the 1970s, noticing that the contemporary authorities (notably Eric Partridge) preferred the past to the present, unaware of the huge array of new slang being coined by the counter-culture. He ponders why he still does this strange, lonely job, exploring the satisfaction that can be gained by tracking down the first use of a term just encountered in one of the cheap dime novels he devours for research. The lexis leans towards pimping and prostitution, crime and imprisonment, violence and cruelty, drunken and drugged debauches: what does this say about the man who spends every day truffling for it? A fascinating look at how one man has built a lexis of 125,000 words that includes 1,740 words for sexual intercourse, 1,351 for the penis, 540 for defecation/urination, 247 for fat, 219 for vomiting and 180 for anal sex, Odd Job Man will delight all those who love the words that the conventional dictionaries leave out.

A propos du livre

À propos de l'auteur

Jonathon Green is the author of the Cassell Dictionary of Slang (1998) and Green's Dictionary of Slang (2010), for which he was awarded the 2012 Dartmouth Medal for the most outstanding reference work of the year. He has also written a history of lexicography, Chasing the Sun (1996), the legendary oral history of the British counterculture, Days in the Life (1988), several other oral histories and All Dressed Up: The Sixties and the Counterculture (1998). He lives in London and Paris.

Détails de l'édition

• Éditeur: Jonathan Cape
• Date d'édition: 2014
• Langue: anglais
• ISBN 10: 022409758X
• ISBN 13: 9780224097581
• Reliure: Relié
• Nombre de pages: 336
• Coordonnées du fabricant: non disponible
• Personne responsable: non disponible