Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, vol 1: A-G.

Was Mr. Gingrich being catty when he called Mrs. Clinton bitchy? Unfortunately "catty" does not appear in the Historical Dictionary, presumably because it is now considered standard English, but "bitchy" does. The editor suggests that it applies only to women or to homosexual men, thus leaving me in the dark as to whether a man can be catty. A Democrat, in any case, might be forgiven for thinking the Newt was behaving like a bastard when he said it, even though that word, "long considered to be one of the strongest abusive terms in English [now] has lost some its force to more overtly sexual insults."

And J. E. Lighter's massive labor of love is, not surprisingly, particularly rich in both sexual terms and insults. Covering only the first seven letters of the alphabet, it nonetheless runs to over a thousand pages of text (a dozen of which, in case you're wondering, are devoted to the f-word in its various forms and compounds). During its preparation Lighter must have been genuinely grateful for the computer's ability to produce macros, for the phrase "usu. considered vulgar" appears on page after page like a Californian mantra. Not surprising, perhaps, if you agree with him (and with Stuart Flexner's Dictionary of American Slang) that most slang, particularly in its taboo and derogatory aspects, reflects male usage and male interests (though Lighter points out that today, particularly among college women, the generalization may be breaking down).

It's not usually a good idea to read reviews of books you've been asked to evaluate, but I did sneak a look at a piece in the New York Review of Books some months ago, whose author sees the Historical Dictionary as a compendium of words whose more common use will be liberating for all of us. Despite Lighter's warning, the (male) reviewer seems to fall for the romanticized view of slang as a more genuine form of communication and description than standard English. He does it by confining his attention almost entirely to the sexual terms, cautiously avoiding the more heavily mined terrain of what Lighter calls slang's "stupidly coarse and provocative" side, particularly in its development of a vocabulary of contempt for people of different classes and groups. His is not a new view; "correct English," Lighter quotes a character in Middlemarch as saying, "is the slang of prigs who write history and essays."

Lighter's enormously rich book doesn't just cover current slang, either. For this is a historical dictionary, and we can learn about badger workers and barnbuners, Cape Ann turkeys, and calibogus. We discover that in 1856 students balled up their exams when they failed them at Middlebury, were feezed when they pledged to join a secret society at the University of Vermont, and bleached when they preferred to be spiritually rather than bodily present at Harvard's morning prayers. We learn that "boondock" comes from a Tagalog word meaning "mountain," that "cumshaw" is a corruption of Amoy dialect kam-sia (ganxie in standard Chinese), meaning "grateful thanks," and we learn that a "gook" was originally a prostitute.

Two world wars, the spread of black English, and the British invasion of the sixties have enormously enriched the American vocabulary, even though political correctness may be diminishing it more recently; here, though "girl" appears as meaning "man" in various forms, Lighter prefers "young woman" when he has to define words like babe, bimbo, bird, biscuit, buffarilla, chick, chippy, cooky, doll, dolly bird, or filly (a few of these apply to both sexes, and a few are "sometimes considered offensive" . Occasionally he demolishes hoary myths. It's upsetting to learn there's no connection between "crap" and the name of the English sanitary engineer Thomas Crapper (I 837-1910), who helped develop the flush toilet. You want proof? Check out J.P. Maher's article "Out of the Closet" (giving a new meaning to that particular phrase), published in 1985. And when he defines "ambulance-chaser" as "a lawyer or lawyer's agent who obtains clients by inciting accident victims to sue for damages, or through similar unethical practices," Lighter betrays a touching nostalgia for a kinder, gentler day in the legal world.

The lucid introduction explains the principles of inclusion and exclusion, distinguishing slang from other forms of nonstandard English, such as cant and jargon, and simply informal use. Still, one notices the absence of certain words. Why, for instance, no "awesome" (as in "totally awesome" though "enormous," which meant the same thing in the nineteenth century, is here? Why no "channel surfing," though "change the channel" makes it? "Bork" is here as a verb, but Rush Limbaugh's "feminazi" isn't (one can only speculate, by the time Volume 11 appears, how many species of "newt" will have emerged).

Of course there are enormous numbers of racial and religious words, most of them insulting: frogs of various sorts, dagoes, ginzos, guineas, bagel-benders, fishbellies, and fishheads. Though not a bamboo American (i.e., gone Asiatic), I study Chinese history, and after reading through the "Chinese" headings fire drill, landing, gangway, home-run) I turned to "American," and found nothing. So let me add "American girl": at the turn of the century it denoted a Western prostitute working the seaports of the China coast. Finally, readers of this journal may wish to know that Roman Catholics have been referred to as cat-lickers, fish-eaters, dogans, or chest-pounders. (I'll confess that my wife had to explain that last term to me, mea culpa. But then she's a Cliffie, a term still used, though "Cantab" has fallen out of fashion for students at the nearby boys' school.) And while there's no reference to "Commonweal Catholic," one wonders if some Latin expletive (usu. considered vulgar) doesn't echo like a chant through the cloisters of the Holy Office.

Now, a thoroughly self-interested appeal would readers please deluge Commonweal's book editor with letters telling him that since he sent me Volume 1, he must send me Volumes 11 and Ill as well? Much as I believe in sharing the wealth of Lighter's splendid work, my library won't be complete without the entire set.