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Saturday, June 10, 2006

Guardian political slang review

The Guardian did a review of my Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang that has just been released in the U.K. It’s generally a great review—Simon Hoggart calls it a “great read”—but I agree with what Ben Zimmer had to say: Who told Hoggart that “clean one’s clock” and “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings” are any kind of politcal slang? There’s nothing particularly political about them, though of course they can be used in a political circumstance.

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This is the personal weblog of Grant Barrett, editor of the Double-Tongued Dictionary, a collection of words from the fringes of English. More about this site...

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