Carny Lingo

[Grant Barrett]

They say they pulled some of it from Joe McKennon's "Circus Lingo"
book, but they don't specify which (or both) of the two books they
used, "Circus Lingo, Written By a Man Who Was There" or "Circus
Lingo: Another Book By the Man Who Was with it." In any case, it
jibes pretty well with, without being too identical to, what is in
David Maurer's June 1931 article in American Speech (vol.  6, no. 5)
"Carnival Cant: A Glossary of Circus and Carnival Slang."

Grant Barrett
gbarrett at worldnewyork.org

On Jul 11, 2005, at 23:56, Benjamin Zimmer wrote:

> "Welcome to the Fair" is a site featuring an extensive glossary of
> carnival lingo: <http://welcometothefair.com/lingo/>. It was recently
> linked on the popular "Boing Boing" blog, so the traffic has
> temporarily
> killed the site. Until it recovers, you can read the glossary as
> cached by
> Google or the Internet Archive...
>
> http://google.com/search?q=cache:welcometothefair.com/lingo/
> http://web.archive.org/welcometothefair.com/lingo/
>
>
> --Ben Zimmer
>
>