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Re: OED redux



Jordan,

Wandering a bit farther afield, I will mention that with some regularity I need to look up jargon (tech or otherwise) and slang, either domestic or foreign. OED is unlikely to offer much help there. For this, I've managed to accumulate a few good reference books for my library. Another good place to start for American slang is the online Urban Dictionary, June 4: emptiful http://www.urbandictionary.com/
Indeed, the Urban Dictionary is an interesting piece of work. It even has spinoffs in other countries, like le Dictionnaire urbain in France (http://dictionnaire-urbain.fr/) or Urbaani sanakirja in Finland (https://www.urbaanisanakirja.com/), and let me add that the latter has a better rating system than the original. A UK slang dictionary is located at http://www.peevish.co.uk/slang/index.htm. I'd like to mention also The Online Dictionary of Playground Slang (http://odps.org/) which has some entertaining tidbits of information well worth browsing.
For a long time I've also had a really useful smaller paperback dictionary of common foreign words, phrases and abbreviations around here somewhere (including from the Latin), but I'm seeing that it is missing from the shelf at the moment, so I can't identify it more specifically.
For looking up foreign words, a good source might be Wikipedia (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carpe_diem). There is even a compendium of lists of foreign words according to the language of origin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lists_of_English_words_by_country_or_language_of_origin). Oxford dictionaries has a nice small list of foreign words: https://en.oxforddictionaries.com/explore/foreign-words-and-phrases Best regards, Kari Eveli LEXITEC Book Publishing (Finland) lexitec@xxxxxxxx *** Lexitec Online *** Lexitec in English: http://www.lexitec.fi/english.html Home page in Finnish: http://www.lexitec.fi/