Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-t5tsf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-03T02:11:32.584Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Prize-Problem Partridge

Review products

EricPartridge, The Selected Works of Eric Partridge. London Routledge, 2015. Seven volume set hardback re-issue. £640. ISBN 978-1-13-891237-3; Set comprises: Slang To-day and Yesterday. London: Routledge, 1933. Pp. 476. Hardback £105, ISBN 978-1-13-891210-6; The World of Words. London: Routledge, 1938. Pp. 354. Hardback £95, ISBN 978-1-13-890441-5; Précis Writing. London: Routledge, 1940. Pp. 222. Hardback £85, ISBN 978-1-13-891233-5; A New Testament Word Book. London: Routledge, 1940. Pp. 216. Hardback £85, ISBN 978-1-13-891225-0; A Dictionary of Abbreviations. London: Routledge, 1940. Pp. 102. Hardback £65, ISBN 978-1-13-891212-0; Comic Alphabets. London: Routledge, 1961. Pp. 136. Hardback £65, ISBN 978-1-13-890435-4; A Dictionary of the Underworld. London: Routledge, 1949, 1968. Pp. 886. Hardback £130, ISBN 978-1-13-890446-0

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 June 2016

Jonathon Green
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Writing in Slang To-day and Yesterday (1933), his pioneering history of the lexical subset that would become his life's work, Eric Partridge, who in time would become the 20th century's leading expert in its lexis, pondered the etymology of the word ‘slang’. It was, he confessed, a ‘prize-problem word’. 82 years on, and 36 since the death at 85 of the man whose many fans would nickname him ‘The Word King’, it is hard to avoid feeling that in terms of his work and the reputation it brought him, it was Partridge too who represents a ‘prize problem.’

Type
Reviews
Information
English Today , Volume 32 , Issue 4 , December 2016 , pp. 68 - 69
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2016 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Farmer, J. 1890–1904. Slang and its Analogues Past & Present. A Dictionary, Historical and Comparative, of the Heterodox Speech of all Classes of Society for more than three hundred Years. London: For subscribers only.Google Scholar
Grose, F. 1785. A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue. London: S. Hooper.Google Scholar
Irwin, G. 1931. American Tramp & Underworld Slang. London: Eric Partridge Ltd.Google Scholar
Partridge, E. 1937. A Dictionary of Slang & Unconventional English. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Partridge, E. 1947. Shakespeare's Bawdy. A Literary and Psychological Essay and a Comprehensive Glossary. London: Routledge.Google Scholar
Partridge, E. 1948. Dictionary of Forces Slang 1939–1945. London: Secker & Warburg.Google Scholar