Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English: Colloquialisms, and Catch-Phrases, Solecisms and Catachresis, Nicknames, and Vulgarisms

There is enough slang, cant ("i.e., language of the underworld"), and expletives here for all takers--there's low, Cockney rhyming, "picturesque Australian similes," society phrases, and even the semiproverbial. Dorothy Wordsworth, of all people, used a nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse--a phrase "applied to a covert yet comprehensible hint, though often stupidity is implied."

Partridge also reveals low language's less larky side. His book can be a dark record of linguistic prejudice through the ages. Of course, in a slang dictionary, nothing is what it seems. Elevated means "drunk"; a deep-freezer is "a girl or woman of the prim or keep-off-me type"; and stage fright is late-20th-century rhyming slang for "a (glass of) light (ale)." Are you able to descry what the jocular Seduce my ancient footwear really means? If not, consider consulting Partridge's masterwork, as large as life and twice as natural.