Language can’t stay still for long. It’s constantly evolving alongside the cultures that use them—and slang frequently showcases this complex relationship at its most creative, playful, and strange. While some terms or phrases may linger for centuries, most of today’s slang terminology is more current. That often makes it difficult to keep up with the times, let alone understand casual communications of the past.
That’s where Jonathon Green came to the rescue. In 1993, Green started compiling 500 years of English slang by sifting through mountains of primary sources. The culmination was Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a three-volume reference set containing 10.3 million words over 53,000 separate entries. It was first published in 2010, but the printed reference tomes are out-of-date and out-of-print only 16 years later. Today, an original copy of Green’s Dictionary can easily set you back over $1,300.
Like slang itself, Green is for the people. Following a few more years of work, the lexicographer—a studier or compiler of dictionaries—transferred his entire project online for anyone to peruse. As Open Culture recently highlighted, Green’s Dictionary of Slang is now available for free as its own, regularly updated website. Not only that, but it includes more than 60,000 additional quotations along with 2,500 new entries and sub-entries. The site also contains search tools as well as a predictably gigantic source bibliography. For an additional subscription fee, users can also gain access to additional citations and advanced search options.
“Language does not reach an end, nor does research,” Green wrote in his original introduction to the website in 2016. “GDoS Online is therefore a project in continual development. As well as the natural expansion of the material on offer, it is our intention to add to the way the information is displayed, both as to quality and quantity.”
With a little persistence, regular perusal of Green’s Dictionary may help revive some long forgotten gems: it’s well worth your next stoppo, if nothing else.
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