A slang dictionary is a reference book containing an alphabetical list of slang, vernacular vocabulary not generally acceptable in formal usage, usually including information given for each word, including meaning, etymology.
It can provide definitions on a range of slang from more mundane terms to obscure sexual practices. Such works also can include words and phrases arising from different dialects and argots, which may or may not have passed into more common usage. They can also track the changing meaning of the terms over time and space, as they migrate and mutate.
This Meaning them of interest to a variety of people, from oral historians, to etymologists.
English language slang lexicography falls into three periods. The canting or criminal slang dictionaries of the 16th to 18th centuries, the vulgar tongue works of the late 18th to mid 19th, and the modern productions that have appeared since.
Canting
The collection of cant, properly the jargon of the mendicant criminal beggars of Tudor and Stuart England, echoes the near-contemporary beggar books of Europe designed to alert the lawabiding public to the existence of such beggars the canting crew listing their occupational types and offering a small glossary of their language.
The word cant comes from Latin cantare, to sing, and refers to the singsong plaints of contemporary beggars. The first such work was Robert Copland Hye Way to the Spyttell Hous. In the form of averse dialogue between Copland, a printer who once worked with William Caxton, and the Porter of the Spytell House, Copland notes and the Porter describes the various categories of beggars and thieves, as well as their tricks and frauds.
There is no glossary as such, but some terms are defined in the text.
In 1561 John Awdeley, another printer, published The Fraternitye of Vacabondes. The brief work, offering 48 headwords, falls into three parts the first deals with rural villains, with their urban cousins and Awdeley.
Orders of Knaues, otherwyse called a Quartern of Knaues.
The most influential 16th century work appears, Thomas Harman Caveat for Common Cursetours. Harman, a magistrate, produced a consciously didactic work, designed to introduce the reader to the leud lousey language of these lewtering luskes and lasy lorrels where with they bye and sell the common people as they pas through the country.
Whych language they terme Peddelars Frenche. There are 24 small essays, each dealing with a different rank of villain, plus a list of some 114 terms. These are very briefly defined, usually with a single synonym. The work concludes with a list of contemporary beggars,. Harry Smyth, he driueleth when he speaketh, and a contrived dialogue written in cant and translated into English.
goodbye letter for co workers
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