--- title: Quiz: Can You Figure Out the Meaning of Centuries-Old Slang? description: The words historical thesaurus may send children running to the hills, for fear they're likely to be bored to death by some fellow with a... canonical: https://time.com/3474442/slang-words-time-and-place/ author: Katy Steinmetz article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-10-08T13:00:41.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-04-13T07:13:35.564Z og:title: Quiz: Can You Figure Out the Meaning of Centuries-Old Slang? og:description: The words historical thesaurus may send children running to the hills, for fear they're likely to be bored to death by some fellow with a... og:url: https://time.com/3474442/slang-words-time-and-place/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: TIME og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Quiz: Can You Figure Out the Meaning of Centuries-Old Slang? twitter:description: The words historical thesaurus may send children running to the hills, for fear they're likely to be bored to death by some fellow with a... twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltde093bcdab65f2d0/6988d9b9bc6cfc69913e2a3c/time-logo.jpg?branch=production --- # Quiz: Can You Figure Out the Meaning of Centuries-Old Slang? by [Katy Steinmetz](https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Oct 8, 2014 1:00 PM UTC by [Katy Steinmetz](https://time.com/author/katy-steinmetz/) ## Katy Steinmetz Oct 8, 2014 1:00 PM UTC The words _historical thesaurus_ may send children running to the hills, for fear they’re likely to be bored to death by some fellow with a monocle. But they also describe the richest reference you’ve probably never heard of. In fact, only one historical thesaurus has ever been produced, in any language, and that’s the Oxford English Dictionary’s, the product of 44 years of toil. And now there’s a new book designed to introduce the masses to a treasure the English professors have been hoarding for themselves since it was published in 2009. In _Words in Time and Place_, author David Crystal starts by explaining what the thing is. A regular old thesaurus will let you look up a word and find words similar in meaning that people use today: a historical thesaurus will not only show you current words but every word anyone has ever used to express that idea in English, in the time of Einstein or Shakespeare or Anglo-Saxon poets. It will also tell you the oldest known use of each word, so you can learn, for example, that people have actually been using _fly_ to mean excellent since 1896: as in, “Dash my wig, that is a fly-ass stagecoach!” “How would Shakespeare have talked about love or the weather or whatever it happens to be?” Crystal tells TIME. “Suddenly you get a way into the mindset of the past that simply wasn’t possible before.” While that’s novel for everyone, it has practical applications, too, in places like the writers’ room on the set of _Mad Men_ or _Downton Abbey_. To celebrate his effort, we’ve put together a quiz using only words that Crystal touches on in his new book, selected out of the 800,000 in the reference. See if you can suss out what’s real and what’s not when it comes to centuries-old slang. 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