With a scope ranging from the 1830s to the current decade packed into over 1,000 pages, The Dictionary of English Rhyming Slangs is a comprehensive and authoritative survey of rhyming slangs in the anglophone world. This prodigious collection of over 9,000 headwords written by Terry Victor and Antonio Lillo reveals the dialects and diverse forms of discourse where this engaging and surprising subset of lexis thrives. Multiple senses are listed chronologically and with each slang etymologies, commentaries, and citations support its usage.
Based on years of extensive research, A Dictionary of English Rhyming Slangs presents a satisfying collection of the varieties of rhyming slang found in and around English-speaking communities worldwide. It covers all forms of rhyming slang in the anglophone world by users from differing social groups and walks of life: criminals, musicians, anglers, second-hand car dealers, and sheep-shearers, among many others.
Besides ordinary lexical items, this work also lists nicknames and one-off expressions found in culturally valued works, from the fields of literary fiction, poetry, comics, TV, radio series, and films. Each entry is accompanied by chronologically ordered citations from a wide variety of sources (printed and otherwise) showing a word and rhyme's life and currency.
The scope, size, and approach of this significant compilation, supported by a substantial bibliography, makes it an indispensable work of reference for anyone with an interest in English slang as well as a key starting point for future research on the origins, social history, and development of this fascinating subsect of the English lexicon.
Terry Victor is an actor, writer, and lexicographer, who is located in the United Kingdom. Victor is a regular on BBC 5 Live's Up All Night Grammar Phone-in with Dotun Adebayo. Alongside
A Dictionary of English Rhyming Slang, Victor is co-editor/compiler of
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. He can often be found discussing language and pondering many whys on his blog at terryvictorcouk.wordpress.com.
Antonio Lillo is a professor at the University of Alicante in the Department of English Philology. His has a doctorate in Philosophy and has done a vast amount of research in Lexicology, Lexicography, and Phonology. Alongside A Dictionary of English Rhyming Slang, Lillo has co-authored Grammar in Gobbets (2011), Linguistic Aspects of Rhyme in English Slang (1995), Transcribing English (2009), and more. In 2018 he won the national research prize, Leocadio Martín Mingorance (English Language and Linguistics), which was awarded by the Spanish Association of Anglo-American Studies
