Book description
The language of crime has a long and venerable history - in fact, the
first dictionary of words specifically used by criminals, Hye-Way
to the Spittel House, dates from as early as 1531. Jonathon
Green is our national expert on slang, and in Crooked Talk he
looks at five hundred years of crooks and conmen, from the
hedge-creepers and counterfeit cranks of
the sixteenth century to the
blaggers and
burners of the twenty-first. Not to mention a substantial
detour behind bars into the world of prisons, and, of course, the
swag, the hideouts, the getaway vehicles and allied 'tools of the
trade' - not forgetting the
cops,
peelers,
fly cops and all other varieties of the
boys in blue.
Arranged thematically, the book shows where particular words came
from, how they have evolved and why they mean what they do. If you
have ever wondered when the police were first referred to as
pigs (the eighteenth century), why prison guards became
known as
redraws ('warder' backwards), or what precisely the
subtle art of
dipology involves (pickpocketing), then this book has all
the answers.
Jonathon Green is a writer and broadcaster and the nation's expert on
slang. His
Dictionary of Slang
first appeared in 1998 to huge critical acclaim, and
Green's
Dictionary of Slang
, his definitive three-volume work, was published in autumn 2010. He has
written widely on slang and dictionary-making, notably
Slang Down the Ages
and
Chasing the Sun
, a history of lexicography. He has also chronicled the world of the
1960s in two oral histories:
Days in the Life
and
All Dressed Up.
He lives in London and Paris.
