Strange Vernaculars: How Eighteenth-Century Slang, Cant, Provincial Languages, and Nautical Jargon Became English

How vocabularies once associated with outsiders became objects of fascination in eighteenth-century Britain

While eighteenth-century efforts to standardize the English language have long been studied—from Samuel Johnson's Dictionary to grammar and elocution books of the period—less well-known are the era's popular collections of odd slang, criminal argots, provincial dialects, and nautical jargon. Strange Vernaculars delves into how these published works presented the supposed lexicons of th...