The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Anecdotal

This is not a normal dictionary. It's a contraband packet passed hand to hand across the centuries, stuffed with the secret language of Victorian England's underbelly. John Camden Hotten, a publisher who knew too much about the literary underworld, assembled this collection from the streets, prisons, taverns, and drawing rooms of 19th-century Britain. Here you'll find the cant of thieves and beggars, the coded chatter of tramps using marks on walls to warn each other of dangerous houses, the slang of soldiers returning from foreign wars, the wit of actors, the argot of university men, and the curious expressions that drifted between parliament and the gutter. Hotten doesn't simply define words; he traces their births, maps their migrations through society, and chronicles the small rebellions that created them. Every entry is a small time machine, taking you into taverns and thieves' kitchens where language was invented in whispers. If you've ever wondered where a word came from, and why it first was spoken, this is the book for those answers, and for discovering the beautiful, profane, inventive chaos that lives beneath proper English.