The study of slang is now taken seriously by academics, especially lexicographers like the late Eric Partridge, devoting their energies to the field and publishing on it, including producing slang dictionaries. In recent years, dictionaries with a more academic focus have tried to bring together etymological studies in an attempt to provide definitive guides to slang while avoiding problems arising from folk etymology and false etymology. Grose's work was arguably the most significant English-language slang dictionary until John Camden Hotten's 1859 A Dictionary of Modern Slang, Cant, and Vulgar Words. Other early slang dictionaries include A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, first published circa 1698, and Francis Grose's A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, first published in 1785. The Canting Academy, or Devil's Cabinet Opened was a 17th-century slang dictionary, written in 1673 by Richard Head, that looked to define thieves' cant. With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassells. Slang dictionaries have been around hundreds of years.
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Famous slang dictionaries 17th and 18th centuries They can also track the changing meaning of the terms over time and space, as they migrate and mutate. Such works also can include words and phrases arising from different dialects and argots, which may or may not have passed into more common usage.
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It can provide definitions on a range of slang from more mundane terms (like " rain check" or " bob and weave") to obscure sexual practices. A slang dictionary is a reference book containing an alphabetical list of slang, which is vernacular vocabulary not generally acceptable in formal usage, usually including information given for each word, including meaning, pronunciation, and etymology.