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Ong & Carnese. The book contains skaty-eight appendixes that are really zooly. Items: a list of more than 300 synonyms for being drunk, from alkied to zigzag; a children's bathroom vocabulary (boom-boom to wee-wee); a hilarious list of improper nouns (drygoodsteria, shinea-torium, baby-sittee); and a fascinating analysis of back slang (yob = boy), rhyming slang (plates of meat=feet), and the so-called "little languages" (Pig Latin, Pelf Latin, Gree, Na, Skimono jive, Ong, Carnese and Tutnee).
"Most American slang," Author Flexner states categorically, "is created and used by males . . . Women have very little of their own slang." If that generalization is true, U.S. males deserve vast credit. To judge from this volume, the slang-fed American language is a prodigiously vital and unremitting thing, a glorious mess of ramstuginous kafooster that may sometimes have to be put to bed with a shovel but is always and invariably ready for Freddie.