A new one to me was to have one's little hat on. I bet Yosemite Sam would love to have a varmint for breakfast.Īs fans of Paul Dickson's magnificent collection Drunk know, there are roughly a bazillion and a half terms for being stinko, like blotto. Get your mind out of the gutter and into the morgue: this one means "to discover a murdered body when one wakes in the morning," and it's been around since the rootin-tootin' cowpoke-shootin' era of 1863. Warning: they may make you scratch your top-hamper (head). Here are a few of the most delightful dumplings of doublespeak: all new to me until Green's came along.
In three huge volumes - with tissue-thin paper and tiny print - there are oodles of terms that are dainty, obfuscating, batty, and concealing. That's pretty much the slang wheelhouse.Īnd yet, as Green has shown, the slang wheelhouse is larger than any of us could have imagined. When you refer to a pile of cash as a wad that would choke a wombat or a lunatic asylum as a giggle academy, you're solidly in the dysphemic realm.
Calling cigarettes and electric chairs coffin sticks and sizzle seats are great examples. The dysphemism is the euphemism's drunk, embarrassing, honest twin. Jonathon Green's slangapalooza is an extraordinary source for fulfilling this column's mission: finding under-the-radar euphemisms.Įuphemisms, you say? Isn't slang more dysphemic? Well, sure. The current love of my life is Green's Dictionary of Slang: an enormous, meticulous, ridiculously wonderful historical dictionary that's the biggest slang collection ever made (uncurated Wiki-crapola like Urban Dictionary doesn't count).
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