[HN Gopher] Green's Dictionary of Slang
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Green's Dictionary of Slang
Author : voisin
Score : 110 points
Date : 2024-04-12 19:45 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (greensdictofslang.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (greensdictofslang.com)
| fernly wrote:
| Wiggy.
|
| [1] https://greensdictofslang.com/search/basic?q=wiggy
| webwielder2 wrote:
| If the word of the week is "act up", I'm not enticed to think
| this is a more useful or detailed reference source than Urban
| Dictionary, or, you know, a dictionary.
| webwielder2 wrote:
| By the way, the built-in dictionary app in macOS is one of the
| most slept-on of Apple's many slept-on built-in apps over the
| years.
| cleverpatrick wrote:
| From the About page:
|
| Green's Dictionary of Slang is the largest historical
| dictionary of English slang. Written by Jonathon Green over 17
| years from 1993, it reached the printed page in 2010 in a
| three-volume set containing nearly 100,000 entries supported by
| over 400,000 citations from c. ad 1000 to the present day. The
| main focus of the dictionary is the coverage of over 500 years
| of slang from c. 1500 onwards.
|
| The printed version of the dictionary received the Dartmouth
| Medal for outstanding works of reference from the American
| Library Association in 2012; fellow recipients include the
| Dictionary of American Regional English, the Oxford Dictionary
| of National Biography, and the New Grove Dictionary of Music
| and Musicians. It has been hailed by the American New York
| Times as 'the piece de resistance of English slang studies' and
| by the British Sunday Times as 'a stupendous achievement, in
| range, meticulous scholarship, and not least entertainment
| value'.
|
| On this website the dictionary is now available in updated
| online form for the first time, complete with advanced search
| tools enabling search by definition and history, and an
| expanded bibliography of slang sources from the early modern
| period to the present day. Since the print edition, nearly
| 60,000 quotations have been added, supporting 5,000 new senses
| in 2,500 new entries and sub-entries, of which around half are
| new slang terms from the last five years.
| dougb5 wrote:
| Read more entries, then. You'll find that it's a labor of love,
| if you're curious. And it _is_ a dictionary, yes.
| https://greensdictofslang.com/about/
| cleverpatrick wrote:
| abandannad
|
| https://greensdictofslang.com/entry/emt4cyy
| jijji wrote:
| this looks to be a book about historical slang, whereas a modern
| slang reference probably is Urbandictionary.com... it looks like
| most of the words referenced in this catalog are not commonly
| used today
| cookie_monsta wrote:
| It's hard to pick the line of where these listings start and end.
| Selfie isn't in there but gyatt is...
| chriscjcj wrote:
| Indeed. I would have thought "shades" (slang for sunglasses)
| would have been in there, but it's not. Perhaps it's not really
| slang and just a synonym.
| brvsft wrote:
| In high school, I bought a used copy of a similar book for 50
| cents at a book fair:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Slang_and_Unco...
|
| It was fun to just thumb through it and find bizarre old phrases
| like "cat's pyjamas."
|
| Cool to see an open and digitized version of something similar,
| especially something better than urbandictionary, which can be
| useful, but also has a lot of repeat entries and a stupid ability
| to downvote correct entries.
| t-3 wrote:
| Does anyone know if there's a dict formatted version of this
| anywhere?
| idempotent_ wrote:
| Another great resource for bizarre and obscure verbiage -
| https://phrontistery.info/
| fluentbyfire wrote:
| If ninnyhammer.com isn't taken yet, I'm grabbing it.
| geekodour wrote:
| nice! there's also https://doesnottranslate.com/
| https://www.reddit.com/r/DoesNotTranslate/
| WilTimSon wrote:
| The top post on that subreddit is hilarious: "[Chinese] Bao Fu
| Xing Ao Ye (revenge bedtime procrastination) - a phenomenon in
| which people who don't have much control over their daytime
| life refuse to sleep early in order to regain some sense of
| freedom during late night hours"
|
| They have some interesting variety there, too.
| virtuallynathan wrote:
| There's more than one slang dictionary, it seems... here's one I
| found in person at UCSD's library:
| https://photos.app.goo.gl/J3rCLtbJMEn4SkKq8
| jamesblonde wrote:
| All irish slang i can think of is in there.
| benreesman wrote:
| I can't wait for the Gen Z stuff to make the cutoff.
|
| https://images.app.goo.gl/xjYschXcPVrECeVD9
| br3d wrote:
| You seem to have linked just the thumbnail here. Got the full
| size?
| benreesman wrote:
| This is what the share button gives me. You can google for
| "gen z programming".
|
| https://images.app.goo.gl/n2ZNK8JoeUvZe5iN9
|
| edit: I did not know that Yeet was a real thing in
| programming, even as a placeholder. This is excellent:
| https://doc.rust-lang.org/std/ops/struct.Yeet.html
| lupire wrote:
| What does float/period mean in that pic?
|
| Is "period" used to mean "has decimal (binimal) point"?
| Frotag wrote:
| https://i.redd.it/vh37k2ep2bcc1.png
|
| https://old.reddit.com/r/ProgrammerHumor/comments/1963h4k/cs.
| ..
| tetris11 wrote:
| I was caught "abaft the wheelhouse" in surprise at this website.
| I don't think I'm using the phrase right.
| weinzierl wrote:
| As someone whose mother tongue isn't English, I find the Urban
| Dictionary incredibly useful sometimes. It's sad sad it is
| blocked in virtually any corporate network.
| wodenokoto wrote:
| You trusts it's definitions as more than jokes?
| xanderlewis wrote:
| Yeah; its usefulness is at least partially diminished by the
| fact that like 95% of entries are basically vandalism.
| vundercind wrote:
| It used to be pretty good but the last three or four times
| I've tried to look something up I've not found anything
| that fits the usage I've seen, and most or all entries are
| clearly someone trying to "make fetch happen" (promote some
| definition their friend circle used for a week then
| dropped) or making a "joke" (just spam).
| nerdponx wrote:
| That's always been part of the fun.
| grotorea wrote:
| You think it's that bad? Usually when I search a definition
| it makes sense in the context that caused me to search for
| the definition.
| weinzierl wrote:
| Exactly, it often just gives the right clue. For native
| speakers connotation is often trivial, but for us it's
| difficult and a source that almost grotesquely exaggerates
| is perfect for picking up that.
| jaystraw wrote:
| humor is independent of language
|
| edit: there are jokes that rely on a specific language or
| culture. but i think (correct me if i'm wrong) sarcasm and
| hyperbole span language
| grardb wrote:
| As someone whose mother tongue is English, I also find Urban
| Dictionary incredibly useful sometimes.
| playingalong wrote:
| I am not saying it doesn't happen, but why would it be blocked?
| Preventing hate speech in company culture? Is anyone thinking
| UD would be a go to place for finding a cool way to insult
| someone?
| weinzierl wrote:
| I don't know. It's just pretty consistent across the
| companies I know and worked for.
| mhuffman wrote:
| >but why would it be blocked? Preventing hate speech in
| company culture?
|
| I suspect it is more about legal exposure, rather than
| thinking someone is going to come up with a new insult. For
| example, I suspect you can imagine some words that even being
| seen on a device in your company would end up in a civil
| lawsuit settlement.
| RicoElectrico wrote:
| OpenDNS classification maybe.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| It's blocked because it costs nothing, it incurs less risk
| than not blocking it, and nobody cares - corporate IT is
| extremely busy, overworked, trying to keep up with essential,
| high value tasks that impact the bottom line.
|
| More immediately, probably it's blocked because it's on some
| blocklist. It's on the blocklist for the same reason: Why
| not? Consider these scenarios:
|
| 1. You're the IT manager. It's not blocked and something on
| UD causes a problem - content, even malware. You may think
| it's valid or not, but regardless HR, legal, managers, some
| VP, multiple employees, IT are all dealing with it. The VP
| asks you: I am extremely busy doing high-return work for the
| company and so are all these other people, and now I and all
| of these people are wasting time on this useless nonsense.
| Why didn't you block it? Isn't this your job? - What do you
| respond?
|
| 2. It's blocked, you work there and want to lookup something
| on UD, and you ask IT to unblock it. IT manager forwards the
| request to your manager, noting that IT staff are very busy
| integrating the new acquisition, but would be happy to do
| whatever your people need for important projects. Your
| manager asks you why you contacted IT. What is your response?
|
| 3. It's blocked, you want to lookup something on UD, and you
| complain to your manager that it's blocked. Your manager
| says: If you can't find something profitable to do, you're
| fired. If you can't figure out to use your phone, you're
| fired. Do you go over your manager's head?
|
| 4. It's blocked, you work in IT and go through the blocklist
| - probably tens of thousands of items long - and unblock some
| things like UD. Your manager says (the same as #3). What do
| you think?
|
| 5. It's blocked and you bring up at a meeting that you think
| it should be unblocked. Nobody speaks. Why are they silent?
|
| You are there to achieve the organization's goals. UD has
| nothing at all to do with that or anything else of enough
| importance or value to even distract a co-worker for a half-
| second, causing them to refocus twice.
| pax wrote:
| What would be a programmatic approach to find a list of most
| rarely used words (in any language?). I'm thinking, loop a list
| of words from a dictionary, and see how many results a search
| engine would return (filtering out dictionary results) - it would
| take a while - most languages have some hundred thousand words.
| nilamo wrote:
| Maybe download an archive of Wikipedia articles and build a
| word occurrence dictionary out of that to compare? It would be
| much faster than a ton of separate search queries
| wolverine876 wrote:
| There are various tools that professionals use to analyze this
| question. Google Books' Ngrams data seems to be popular.
|
| Here's a paper whose methodology addresses some of your
| question:
|
| Jean-Baptiste Michel et al. Quantitative Analysis of Culture
| Using Millions of Digitized Books. Science 331, 176-182 (2011).
| DOI:10.1126/science.1199644
|
| https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.1199644
| wolverine876 wrote:
| The NY Times review provides plenty of useful context, including
| other slang dictionaries:
|
| https://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/03/books/review/slanguage-bo...
| kdmoyers wrote:
| Green's interview on the Butter No Parsnips podcast. He sounds
| like an amusing guy!
| https://open.spotify.com/episode/6WNG3aoS0sAu4Uija7xP3X
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(page generated 2024-04-13 23:01 UTC)