Britain's foremost lexicographer of slang—having been responsible for the Chambers Slang Dictionary, the Slang Thesaurus, Slang Down the Ages, and the multivolume Green's Dictionary of Slang—Jonathon Green here traces the development of slang and its trajectory through society, and offers an impassioned argument for its defense. Often dismissed as bad language or swear-words, slang, Green argues, is a "counter-language." Born in the street, it resists the niceties of the respectable. It can be cruel, but also inventive, creative, and very often funny. Green uncovers an oral history of marginality and rebellion, of dispossession and frustration, showing how slang gives a vocabulary and a voice to our most guarded thoughts.