Tom Dalzell

Tom Dalzell is the business manager and financial secretary of the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers Local 1245, which represents 18,000 working men and women in California and Nevada. He began his career working with the United Farm Workers in rural California in 1972. Since 1983, Dalzell has devoted a considerable portion of his life to the study of American slang, and is recognized as a national expert. He has authored two books on slang, Flappers 2 Rappers: American Youth Slang (Merriam-Webster, 1996), The Slang of Sin (Merriam-Webster, 1998) and Damn the Man: Slang of the Oppressed in America (Dover Publications, 2010). Dalzell is the senior editor of The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, which he is currently in the process of updating.