Happy Birthday GDoS!

Jonathon Green takes justifiable pride in his accomplishments: Green’s Dictionary of Slang (GDoS) was launched online on 12 October 2016. I cannot say that this made much of a splash beyond a minuscule and immediate few.¹ The print edition had been published six years earlier, and had I not called in every figurative debt I could find so as to obtain its reviews (and why not thank once more those who conjured up so many kind words in its favour), would have slipped on stage virtually unseen. As it was, amazon, as only they would be capable of doing, shrank its substantial price to something a least worth considering, and it momentarily topped the three niche charts for which it was eligible. Now its digital incarnation is ten years old². I have no idea how many times it has been consulted, nor by how many individuals or institutions. What I do know is that never a day passes without me loading it up and, via screen or printed page, setting out to see what slang – new, chronologically…