Wednesday, December 20, 2006

The Wealth of American Slang

cube farm*
prairie-dogging*
idea hamster*

A charming interview on NPR's All Things Considered introduces Paul Dickson's 3rd edition of Slang: The Topical Dictionary of Americanisms.


* Dickson says that the American office environment has been a rich source of new slang terms during the 10 years since the previous volume. A cube farm is an office filled with cubicles. Prairie-dogging occurs when a loud noise happens and heads pop up over the tops of cubicles trying to see what's going on. Idea hamsters are people who always seem to have their idea generators running.

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