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That's more likely to be true of learned vocabulary, whereas colloquialisms only get into the dictionaries once they are in general use.

I learned "boner" (= erection) from American friends in the late '60s, and the Online Etymological Dictionary bears this out:

Online Etymology Dictionary

boner
"blunder," 1912, baseball slang, probably from bonehead "stupid person" (1908). Meaning "erect penis" is 1950s, from earlier bone-on (1940s), probably a variation (with connection notion of "hardness") of hard-on (1893).

(PS do you remember "on the horn"?)

by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Jan 4th, 2009 at 11:54:27 AM EST
[ Parent ]
I mean the expression, not... Well, you know what I mean.
by afew (afew(a in a circle)eurotrib_dot_com) on Sun Jan 4th, 2009 at 11:57:02 AM EST
[ Parent ]
Wow - that's a blast from the past, Haven't heard it in yonks.

It is imo possible to have words in 'common' usage that never enter the vocabulary of certain groups in society. There are plenty of gay terms in the dictionary that would never penetrate the US Bible Belt because the whole subject is so outré. Plenty of drug terms too. An entry in the dictionary certainly means that some people use the term, but not all. There are also many words with multiple definitions where one group uses only one of the definitions. 'Fag' as an example, between the US and UK.

You can't be me, I'm taken

by Sven Triloqvist on Sun Jan 4th, 2009 at 12:43:48 PM EST
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