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1 78Reviews Urban Dictionary: Fuhrious Street Slang Defined. 2005. Aaron Peckham. Kansas City: Andrews McMeel Publishing. Pp. 352. Cassell's Dictionary ofSlang. 2005. Second Edition. Jonathon Green. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson. Pp. 1508. A:aron Peckham, compiler of the Urban Didionary, launched urban- . dictionary.com, an online slang dictionary with user-submitted definitions, in 1999. It has become, Peckham claims, "the irreverent calling card of a linguistic generation." The website is popular with radio talk show hosts and journalists who are not inclined to consult acknowledged authorities on slang and who need a quick answer, right or wrong. For a slang lexicographer, however , the open-source website is chaotic and inconsistent, and it serves at most as a starting point for terms that might be worth searching for elsewhere. With Urban Dictionary, Peckham purports to record current street slang, selecting the "funniest, wittiest, and truest" entries from the website, promising the reader "street cred." Any hope that in book form Peckham would transcend the chaos and anarchy of the website is quickly dashed by the complete lack of editorial structure and lexicographical methodology. Headwords are a challenge — the singular and plural forms of nouns are used without apparent reason, active and passive forms of a verb are used, the past tense or participle form is often used instead of the infinitive for verbs, and articles are included in the headwords (a fifth under the letter A, da cheese under the letter D, and the breaL· under the letter T) . Headwords with multiple senses are especially frustrating. Peckham clusters all parts of speech in a single entry without identifying the part of speech, and often two or more senses are simply different contributors' attempts to define the same sense. There was no apparent effort to match the part of speech in a headword/definition/usage sequence . An unsettling number of definitions are of the comic dictionary genre and are as funny as most comic dictionaries. Some definitions are patently wrong, and important current senses are often omitted. Peckham's choices for inclusion are as troubling as his lapses of lexicographical methodology. Although the dictionary's universe is self-defined as street slang, standard English headwords abound. Audiophile, bored, cult movie, and hangover are by no definition slang, yet each is defined, as are dozens of other non-slang register words. Also included are many non-slang words of the moment (aggressive graffiti, blue state, and freedomfries) , idioms (built on sand), eye dialect (jeetjetT), and gestures (brush your shoulders off). After discarding the obvious non-slang and hacking through the lack of methodology and structure, there may or may not be some raw material that Dictionaries:Journal oftheDictionary Society ofNorth America 27 (2006) , 178-180 Reviews179 is worth pursuing elsewhere. Because of the lack of editorial discipline, lack of sourced citations, and lack of etymologies, the user cannot tell if an entry is legitimate or if it is a misdefinition or personal idiosyncrasy of the contributor. Indigenous slang dictionaries are often extremelyvaluable to lexicographers . An effort like A Dictionary ofTeenage Slangfrom the English II class taught by Mr. Friss at Mt. Diablo High in December 1964 offers lexicographers a useful glimpse into the language of a time and place. Peckham's work does not rise even to the level of an indigenous, do-it-yourself slang dictionary. It is hardly more than a collection of flashy terms of dubious currency, presented poorly. This criticism is not made merely to warn readers away from Urban Dictionary . It is made because of the tremendous promise in Peckham's project, promise that has not been fulfilled but with some effort could be. Peckham has a well-established presence on the web, and this presence, combined with his enthusiasm and energy, could be of great benefit to lexicographers. Some schooling on field collection techniques would go a long way towards improving the raw material with which Peckham is working, and the intervention of a lexicographer to copyedit his work could correct the flaws in presentation. Peckham is enjoying popular success with his product as it now exists, leaving no clear mandate in popular terms for a change. The decision to improve his data collection and presentation is...

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