Jonathon Green is a tosher. As a lexicographer he dives into archives and emerges with armfuls of slangy curios, such as ‘bell-polisher’ and ‘bitchin’. In Sounds & Furies he sifts English slang from tosheroons as diverse as the Wife of Bath to Fast Times at Ridgemont High.
Green’s passion for his subject is infectious. His corpus of 110,000 slang words and phrases, published in 2010 as Green’s Dictionary of Slang, is filled with coinages both common and rare. In his latest volume, he’s set himself the challenge of unlocking women’s love-hate relationship with slang. As he says at the beginning, we know plenty about the status of women in slang, but not much about how women use it.
He offers plenty of examples of women coiners. Female reporters, online forums popular with young lesbians and even Mumsnet turn up some interesting nuggets. He has a great eye for lexicographical treasures he finds lying around.
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