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Green's dictionary of Slang

skip.knox

toujours gai, archie
Moderator
It's nice, but it was *meh* for me. I picked a word more or less at random -- caboodle. It gave me
"a large mixed-up collection of objects or people; usu. in phr. below."

I then turned to my trusty Websters New Universal Unabridged Dictionary, which gave me
"a corruption of kit and boodle" -- which explains our phrase "kit and kaboodle" -- followed by
"kit, kith, family, relations, and boodle, D. boedle, property, possessions, lot; group; number ..."
which was far more useful, especially for the fantasy writer who riffs on words.

That book btw, was one of the best buys of my book-buying life. It's over 2000 pages long. It's that old-school dictionary that includes things like an essay on the history of the English language, a dictionary of Scripture proper names, abbreviations commonly used in writing and printing, forms of address, tables of weights and measures, maps, commercial and financial terms, and so on. Hundreds of pages of supplements, and every dictionary entry has a decent etymology. Found it at a Waldenbooks at a mall for twenty bucks. No lie.
 
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