Getting Off at Gateshead

by Jonathon Green

Where might it be advisable to bend your steps if you experienced an urgent need to bury a quaker? What would be your state of mind - or rather the state of your body - if someone described you as after your greens? How often does the average woman enjoy the pleasure of a visit from the cardinal? Under what circumstances would it be advisable to get out at Liverpool Edge Hill, rather than continuing all the way to Liverpool Lime Street? What is the exact nature of the complaint known as 'Irish toothache', and why is a hot poultice - or, failing that, a consultation with the eminent physician Dr Jerkoff - generally considered to be the only reliable cure? How old is the 'F' word and where does it come from? And has it always been verboten in polite society? Getting Off at Gateshead provides the answers to these, and to hundreds of other intriguing questions about words and phrases that are generally best avoided in job interviews, vicarage tea-parties, or when meeting your mother-in-law. The UK's leading slang expert Jonathon Green here provides the unexpurgated low-down on the downest and dirtiest expressions in the English language, some of them current, some of them obsolete - all of them utterly filthy, relating as they do to every conceivable human bodily function, whether sexual, masturbatory, menstrual, defecatory or emetic. Getting out at Gateshead not only tells the intriguing but little-known stories behind some familiar profanities - from the 'F' word to the 'C' word - it also offers a cornu-copia of less familiar terms that readers will be itching to regale their friends with. A richly entertaining exploration of the endlessly inventive world of English slang, Getting Off at Gateshead is a must for every word buff's 2008 Christmas stocking.

224 pages, Hardcover

First published October 2, 2008

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the GoodReads database with this name. See this thread for more information.

I am a lexicographer, that is a dictionary maker, specialising in slang, about which I have been compiling dictionaries, writing and broadcasting since 1984. I have also written a history of lexicography. After working on my university newspaper I joined the London ‘underground press’ in 1969, working for most of the then available titles, such as Friends, IT and Oz. I have been publishing books since the mid-1970s, spending the next decade putting together a number of dictionaries of quotations, before I moved into what remains my primary interest, slang. I have also published three oral histories: one on the hippie Sixties, one on first generation immigrants to the UK and one on the sexual revolution and its development. Among other non-slang titles have been three dictionaries of occupational jargon, a narrative history of the Sixties, a book on cannabis, and an encyclopedia of censorship. As a freelancer I have broadcast regularly on the radio, made appearances on TV, including a 30-minute study of slang in 1996, and and written columns both for academic journals and for the Erotic Review.

My slang work has reached its climax, but I trust not its end, with the publication in 2010 of Green’s Dictionary of Slang, a three volume, 6,200-page dictionary ‘on historical principles’ offering some 110,000 words and phrases, backed up by around 410,000 citations or usage examples. The book covers all anglophone countries and its timeline stretches from around 1500 up to the present day. For those who prefer something less academic, I published the Chambers Slang Dictionary, a single volume book, in 2008. Given that I am in no doubt that the future of reference publishing lies in digital form, it is my intention to place both these books on line in the near future.