Hugh Rawson

Hugh Rawson (September 12, 1936 - June 1, 2013) was an American editor and author.^[1] He was the director of Penguin USA’s reference books operations and, for 12 years, worked as the editor of the Bulletin of The Authors Guild. He wrote or co-wrote a dozen books, including Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms (1989), A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk (1981), and The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations (2005).

Early life and education

Rawson was born on September 12, 1936^[where?]. He was raised in Mamaroneck, New York with two sisters and a brother. His father was an editor, writer, and magician.^[2] Rawson was educated in the Rye Neck school system until he was a sophomore in high school. At the age of fifteen, he received a Ford Foundation scholarship to Yale University. He graduated from Yale in 1956. After college, he served in the United States Army Medical Corps for two years.^[3]

Career

After the army, Rawson worked as a reporter for American Banker and as an editor for a weekly McGraw-Hill business magazine.^[3]

Later, he went into book publishing. He worked for Thomas Y. Crowell Co. where he ran the trade department until the company was sold. He worked various jobs for publishers and freelancing,^[3] before he became the director of Penguin USA’s reference books operation.^[3] For 12 years, he was editor of the Bulletin of The Authors Guild.^[3] He also worked as a columnist for American Heritage magazine,^[3] where he worked on American words and phrases and wrote a blog on language for The Huffington Post.^[3]

Rawson wrote and co-wrote more than a dozen books, most of them involving language and speech. They included five dictionaries of quotations that he co-wrote with his wife.^[4][5]

Shortly before he died, Rawson worked for a year as the assistant of William Safire on the last edition of Safire’s Political Dictionary.^[3]

Reviews

About his book A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk (1981), Newsday wrote "Rawson's book is one of those welcome works of scholarship which can be read just for a good time."^[6]

Of the book's introduction, the Mercury wrote it "is about as interesting and amusing as anything published lately.^[7]

While the Boston Globe wrote: "Hugh Rawson's entertaining, informative and wonderfully salutary dictionary of euphemisms is good both for reading and reference and is a monument to the power of denial in human affairs.... Perhaps the most important lesson to be learned from Rawson's dictionary is that the ultimate euphemism may be the word "euphemism" itself."^[8]

Personal life and death

Rawson married journalist and environmentalist, Margaret Miner,^[4] in 1973.

Rawson died in 2013.^[9] He was survived by his wife and their two daughters.

Books

• Rawson, Hugh, and Margaret Miner, eds. 2015. The Penguin Dictionary of Quotations from Shakespeare. London: Penguin Books Ltd. ISBN 9780140513479.
• Rawson, Hugh, and Margaret Miner. 2006. The Oxford Dictionary of American Quotations. 2nd ed. New York: Oxford University Press.^[10]
• Rawson, Hugh. Unwritten Laws: The Unofficial Rules of Life as Handed Down by Murphy and Other Sages. Edison, NJ: Castle Books, 2002.
• Rawson, Hugh, and Margaret Miner. 2000. The New International Dictionary of Quotations. 3rd ed. New York: Penguin. ISBN 9780451199638.
• Rawson, Hugh, and Margaret Miner, eds. 1997. American Heritage Dictionary of American Quotations. New York: Penguin. ISBN 9780670100026.
• Rawson, Hugh, and Margaret Miner. 1994. The New International Dictionary of Quotations. 2nd ed. New York: Penguin. ISBN 9780451175977.
• Rawson, Hugh. Devious Derivations: Popular Misconceptions, and More Than 1,000 True Origins of Common Words and Phrases. New York: Crown Publishers, 1994.^[11]
• Rawson, Hugh. A Dictionary of Invective: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present. London: Robert Hale Ltd., 1991.^[12]
• Rawson, Hugh. Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present.New York: Crown Publishers, 1989.^[13][14]
• Miner, Margaret, and Hugh Rawson, eds. 1992. A Dictionary of Quotations from the Bible. New York: Penguin Random House Australia. ISBN 9780451165503.
• Rawson, Hugh, and Margaret Miner. 1988. The New International Dictionary of Quotations. 1st ed. New York: Penguin. ISBN 9780451151537.
• Rawson, Hugh. A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk: Being a Compilation of Linguistic Fig Leaves and Verbal Flourishes for Artful Users of the English Language. New York: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1981.^[15][16]
• Krieghbaum, Hillier, and Hugh Rawson. An Investment in Knowledge: The First Dozen Years of the National Science Foundation's Summer Institutes Programs to Improve Secondary School Science and Mathematics Teaching, 1954–1965. New York: New York University Press, 1969.

References

1. "Hugh Rawson". About Words - Cambridge Dictionary blog.
2. "Hugh Rawson: He Loved Words, from the Playful to the Wicked". 20 June 2013.
3. "Writer, Editor and Roxbury's 'Good Neighbor' Hugh Rawson Dies at 76". CT Insider. June 4, 2013.
4. Olson, Emily M. (9 May 2024). "Roxbury's Margaret Miner, longtime environmentalist, dies at 86; remembered as a 'force of nature'". Register Citizen. Connecticut. Retrieved 23 September 2025.
5. https://www.ctinsider.com/news/article/Writer-Editor-and-Roxbury-s-Good-Neighbor-Hugh-16895515.php
6. Hanscom, Leslie (17 Jan 1982). "The Utility of Not Always Saying What we Mean". Ideas. Newsday. New York City. p. 18. Retrieved 28 October 2025 – via newspapers.com.
7. Seaton, R. M. (15 Nov 1981). "The Mercury on Nice Words". Books. The Mercury. Manhattan, Kansas. pp. D1 – D2. Retrieved 28 October 2025 – via newspapers.com.
8. Kaplan, Justin (15 Nov 1981). "What's in a Name? Who Knows?". Boston Globe. pp. B13. Retrieved 28 October 2025 – via newspapers.com.
9. Hamilton, Anne N. (23 June 2013). "A Lover of Words, from the Playful to the Wicked". Hartford Courant. p. B5. Retrieved 24 September 2025.
10. Hill, Dennis (19 February 2006). "Reference works useful, offer valuable insights". Books. The Daily Oklahoman. Oklahoma City, Oklahoma. p. 5F. Retrieved 24 September 2025. The other book, "The Oxford Dictionary of American Quota-tions" (Oxford University Press, $39.95), is the second edition of a book published in 1997. It contains many new entries. Selected and annotated by Hugh Rawson and Margaret Miner, the quotations come from speeches, news stories, campaign slogans, poetry, songs, books, sermons and other sources.
11. https://scholarworks.wmich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1157&context=gatherings
12. McIntyre, Ian (25 Mar 1991). "Vulgar Tongues and all the Views Unfit to Print". The Independent. p. 19. Retrieved 28 October 2025 – via newspapers.com.
13. Menaker, Daniel (May 13, 1990). "IN SHORT; REFERENCE". The New York Times – via NYTimes.com.
14. "Word Watchers : WICKED WORDS: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present by Hugh Rawson (Crown: $24.95; 435 pp. ) : THE WOrd's GOTTEN OUT by Willard R. Espy (Clarkson N. Potter: $24.95; 354 pp.)". Los Angeles Times. 18 February 1990.
15. "BOOKS OF THE TIMES; Books Of The Times". The New York Times. December 18, 1981 – via NYTimes.com.
16. Yandell, James (1990). "Things Too Fierce to Mention Hugh Rawson . A Dictionary of Euphemisms & Other Doubletalk Being a Compilation of Linguistic Fig Leaves and Verbal Flourishes for Artful Users of the English Language . New York, Crown Publishers, 1981". The San Francisco Jung Institute Library Journal. 9 (3): 35–46. doi:10.1525/jung.1.1990.9.3.35. JSTOR 10.1525/jung.1.1990.9.3.35.

External links

• Hugh Rawson at The Huffington Post
• Hugh Rawson at American Heritage