author
Albert Barrère
1846–1921
A French-born teacher and lexicographer who made a specialty of lively, unofficial language, he is best remembered for dictionaries that captured slang, cant, and military terms. His books open a window onto the everyday speech of the late nineteenth century, from Paris street talk to English and Anglo-Indian jargon.
1 Audiobook
About the author
Born in Paris around 1846, Albert Marie Victor Barrère later built his career in Britain as a French professor and writer. Surviving library and reference records identify him as a scholar of language who spent years collecting unusual expressions, especially the kinds of words that formal dictionaries often ignored.
Barrère is best known for works such as Argot and Slang: A New French and English Dictionary of the Cant Words, Quaint Expressions, Slang Terms and Flash Phrases Used in the High and Low Life of Old and New Paris and, with Charles G. Leland, A Dictionary of Slang, Jargon & Cant. He also compiled A Dictionary of English and French Military Terms, showing the same fascination with practical, specialized vocabulary.
What makes his work still enjoyable is its curiosity about how people really speak. Rather than treating slang as trivial, Barrère preserved it as part of living culture, leaving behind books that are useful to readers, translators, and anyone interested in the history of language.