Eric (Honeywood) Partridge

Lexicographer, born in Waimata Valley, Gisborne, New Zealand. He studied at Queensland and Oxford universities, was elected Queensland travelling fellow at Oxford after World War 1, and briefly lectured at Manchester and London universities (1925–7). For most of his life he worked as a freelance writer, carrying out a vast amount of painstaking personal research into the history and meaning of words. He is best known for his specialized studies of slang and other aspects of colloquial language. His works in this field include the pioneering Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937), Usage and Abusage (1947), and A Dictionary of the Underworld, British and American (1950), as well as many individual essays on the history and usage of English words.

Eric Honeywood Partridge (February 6, 1894 – June 1, 1979) was a noted New Zealand/British lexicographer of the English language, particularly of its slang.

Partridge was born near Waimata Valley, Gisborne, on the North Island of New Zealand to John Thomas Partridge, a grazier, and his wife Ethel Norris. During this time Partridge also taught for three years as a school teacher before serving in the Australian infantry during the First World War.

After receiving his degree, he became Queensland Travelling Fellow at Balliol College, Oxford, where he worked on both an MA on eighteenth-century English romantic poetry, and a B.Litt in comparative literature. He then became a full-time writer, occupying the same desk (K1) in the British Library almost daily for the next fifty years. His first major work on slang, Slang Today and Yesterday, appeared in 1933, and his well-known Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English followed in 1937.

Partridge wrote over forty books on the English language, including well-known works on etymology and slang. His papers are archived at Birmingham University, British Library, Cambridge University, Kings College, the Royal Institute of British Architects, the University of Exeter, the University of San Francisco, Warwickshire Record Office, and William Salt Library. New York, Macmillan Co., 1961 (copyright 1960) A New Testament Word Book: a Glossary London, George Routledge & Republished New York, Books for Libraries Press, 1970. The 1987 republication by the Christian publisher Barbour & Company of Uhricksville, Ohio as The Book of New Testament Word Studies, with copyright claimed by the publisher, appears to be a copyright violation. New York, Philosophical Library, 1954 A Dictionary of the Underworld. London, Macmillan Co., 1949; reprinted with new addenda, New York, Bonanza Books, 1961 From Sanskrit to Brazil. Secker & Warburg A Dictionary of Catch Phrases. Routledge & A Dictionary of Clichés. Routledge & A Dictionary of Forces' Slang. Reprint: Greenwich House, New York, 1983. Reprint: Random House Value Publishing(1988) A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English 1st edition: London, Routledge & 2nd edition 1938 3rd edition 1949 4th edition 1951 5th edition in two volumes, supplement much enlarged, 1961. 6th edition 1967 7th edition 1970 8th edition London and New York, Routledge, 1984 Shakespeare's Bawdy. London, Routledge & Kegan Paul/New York, E. Dutton & (1948), Reprint: Routledge (1991) ISBN 0-415-05076-6 Slang Today and Yesterday. Routledge & A Smaller Slang Dictionary. Norton & Macmillan Publishing Co., New York.