The Guardian did a review of my Oxford Dictionary of American Political Slang that has just been released in the U.K. It’s generally a great review—Simon Hoggart calls it a “great read”—but I agree with what Ben Zimmer had to say: Who told Hoggart that “clean one’s clock” and “it ain’t over till the fat lady sings” are any kind of politcal slang? There’s nothing particularly political about them, though of course they can be used in a political circumstance.
