The Slang Dictionary




Browse The Slang Dictionary

Read The Slang Dictionary Online

Lookup and browse words with this free online version of the 1913 edition of The Slang Dictionary: Etymological, Historical and Andecdotal by John Camden Hotten. The book was published in London, England in 1913 by Chatto & Windus and is now an excellent source of word and language history.

This online version of the slang dictionary allows you to browse or lookup specific slang word entries and view their definition and other useful information. For example, you will see the position of the word in the slang dictionary, and the next and previous entries. Browse by page or use the random word suggestions to discover and learn something interesting about the early 20th century.

Before you begin searching for words, you may wish to read this snippet from the dictionary's preface to give insight into the purpose behind the book:

[The intention of this book] always was to give those words which are familiar to all conversant with our colloquialisms and locutions, but which have hitherto been connected with an unwritten tongue, a local habitation, and to produce a book which, in its way, would be as useful to students of philology, as well as to lovers of human nature in all its phases, as any standard work in the English language. The squeamishness which tries to ignore the existence of slang fails signally, for not only in the streets and the prisons, but at the bar, on the bench, in the pulpit, and in the Houses of Parliament, does slang make itself heard, and, as the shortest and safest means to an end, understood too.

Or read the full preface, and other sections of the dictionary; browse by section above.

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