The Joy of Slang

Slang is bad. *

Abso-fucking-lutely bad. **

And abso-fucking-lutely happens to be the very first entry in one of several books on slang that came out of the "boxes we didn't know we had". The boxes could very well be called a renaissance person's treasure given their range. From Stedman's Medical Dictionary to a tome on World Famous Paintings edited by non other than Rockwell Kent, from books on gardening to a phat Industrial Safety Equipment catalog, from a Handbook for Chemical Engineers to 125 Super Songs of the Superstars, from the Deadbase to Berkeley in 1900.

By the way, did you know that D.R. Wentworth & Co. at 809 Delaware St., West Berkeley sold SHU-EZ... at prices from $ 2.25 to 3.50? Or that the Postmaster at the time was German?

The abso-fucking-lutely hilarious book on slang is Forbidden American English, published by National Textbook Company. In the foreword, the editors take great pain to explain that one view might be that none of the expressions in this book ought to be forbidden, a ballsy statement indeed.

The purpose of the dictionary is to help non-native speakers navigate the language without embarrassment or - as the blogster would say - without resorting to the exclamation what the fuck? in polite conversation when a surprise interpretation of a seemingly harmless word or phrase pops up.

The book has a definition of terms which classify the entries as, for instance, colloquial, crude, jocular, or juvenile.

Funny enough, the dictionary includes a Pronunciation Guide. Since you are not supposed to utter these words, the blogster assumes this is to help you understand the terms when someone else uses them in conversation or yells at you.

Since all of life is all about context, a good dictionary provides example phrases, so does this one. They may even help you avoid being ridiculed in public, for example, when you mention your seafood allergy when out having dinner with friends and your best buddy goes "well, you should make sure their clams are not bearded clams".

Learning slang is a good thing, it gives you a choice between an eloquent jab and a foul mouthed insult, and if you get the context right, you have control over the image you project.

The blogster frequently plays with the allure of linguistic transgression and goes for the image of bat-shit crazy bastard. People tend to bother you less when you do that.


* As in bad.
** As in great.