Historical Dictionary of American Slang

The Historical Dictionary of American Slang, often abbreviated HDAS, is a dictionary of American slang. The first two volumes, Volume 1, A – G (1994), and Volume 2, H – O (1997), were published by Random House, and the work then was known as the Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, sometimes abbreviated as RHHDAS. Both volumes used the same ISBN, ISBN 0-394-54427-7; the paperback editions are ISBN 978-0-394-54427-4 for Volume 1 and ISBN 978-0-679-43464-1 for Volume 2.

Historical Dictionary of American Slang

Volume 1
Author	Jonathan E. Lighter
Language	English
Subject	Slang
Genre	Reference work
Publisher	Random House
Publication date	1994 (v.1), 1997 (v.2)
Publication place	United States
Media type	Print
Pages	1742 (first 2 vols.)
ISBN	0-394-54427-7
OCLC	30029055
Dewey Decimal	427.973
LC Class	PE 2846 .H57 1994

Background

When Random House discontinued publication, Oxford University Press announced in 2003 that it would publish the two remaining volumes, Volume 3, P – S [Part 1], ISBN 978-0-19-517418-2, and Volume 4, S [Part 2] – Z. As of 2020, however, those volumes have not yet been published.

Each entry includes representative quotations, including the earliest quotation using the word. HDAS is edited by Jonathan E. Lighter of the University of Tennessee. It is sometimes compared to Green's Dictionary of Slang, which takes a generally similar approach but is not focused specifically on American slang.

The HDAS is not to be confused with the DAS, the Dictionary of American Slang (1975).