WHY DICCIONARIO DE ARGOT, EL SOHEZ

I asked Camilo José Cela for a brief prologue to my 1997 An English and Spanish Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional Language. He wrote it and asked me to his place in Puerta de Hierro several times. I showed him a few pages of my project on a Spanish Dictionary of Slang. Cela liked it but suggested I use backup citations for every entry. Foolhardily I dived into the project not realizing the amount of work it was to take. After two years and reading over 800 books, I had the manuscript ready. Víctor García de la Concha, then Director of the Real Academia Española, refused to allow me to use the CREA or CORDE, data bases that were almost ready for public use. I went to the Academia's library every day, from 10 to 1, for a month, to check the citation files. In 2000 Larousse published Gran Diccionario del argot, el sohez. McGraw-Hill brought out the US edition and Ediciones del Serbal also published two additional editions. 

Cela suggested I use the word soez for the dictionary. I just could not bring myself to contradict the Nobel Prize winner. Luckily I found the possibility of using sohez, and in the Introduction I explain its etymology and definition.