A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words
non-fiction work by John Camden Hotten
A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant and Vulgar Words is a dictionary of slang originally compiled by publisher and lexicographer John Camden Hotten in 1859.
The first edition was published in 1859, with the full title and subtitle: A dictionary of modern slang, cant, and vulgar words: used at the present day in the streets of London, the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, the houses of Parliament, the dens of St. Giles, and the palaces of St. James : preceded by a history of cant and vulgar language : with glossaries of two secret languages, spoken by the wandering tribes of London, the costermongers, and the patterers. It has also been published as The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical, and Anecdotal.
The dictionary included criminal slang, back slang, rhyming slang, and other types of slang. Its author, Hotten, included histories of some slangs (back slang and rhyming slang), a detailed bibliography, and a noted definition:
Slang represents that evanescent, vulgar language, ever changing with fashion and taste, ... spoken by persons in every grade of life, rich and poor, honest and dishonest ... Slang is indulged in from a desire to appear familiar with life, gaiety, town-humour and with the transient nick names and street jokes of the day ... Slang is the language of street humour, of fast, high and low life ...
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This entry incorporates text from “A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.