Eric Honeywood Partridge grew up in New Zealand. In 1907 his family moved to a wheat farm on the Darling Downs, Queensland, and Partridge went to Toowoomba Grammar School from 1907 to 1910. He taught for three years in Queensland and New South Wales before winning a scholarship to the new University of Queensland, enrolling in honours in Classics. In his first year at university Partridge circulated a volume of verse translations from French poetry.
Partridge enlisted in the AIF in 1915 and saw service at Gallipoli and in France. He was wounded at Pozieres and endured several episodes of illness. He returned to Australia in 1918. During the war, Partridge had written poems, stories and accounts of battle; some were published in Queensland University Magazine. He later published 'Frank Honywood, Private', described by Geoffrey Serle in his introduction as 'a minor classic of war literature', as part of Three Personal Records of the War (1929). On his return to Australia he studied modern languages at the University of Queensland, graduating B.A. with first class honours in 1921. He won the university travelling scholarship, which he took up at Oxford. There he gained a B.Litt. and was awarded an M.A. at the University of Queensland in 1923 for work done at Oxford on English romantic poetry. Partridge visited Queensland for the last time in mid-1924 and returned to England, lecturing in English literature at the Universities of Manchester and London.
In 1925 Partridge married Agnes Dora, nee Vye-Parminter. He founded the Scholartis Press in 1927; it published in London until the depression sent it bankrupt in the early thirties. Partridge published scholarly editions of English literature, some of which he edited and introduced, and a range of contemporary novels. The Scholartis Press also published works written by Partridge, under the pseudonym Corrie Denison. Partridge left Scholartis Press in December 1931 and it was disbanded in November 1935.
Always interested in words and language, in 1930 Partridge published Songs and Slang of the British Soldier: 1914-1918, which he edited with John Brophy, so beginning his work on unconventional English which was to last until his death. He discovered through this publication that books on 'words' could sell between 1,000 and 6,000 copies compared with 100-600 for belles-lettres. Partridge researched and published a huge body of lexicographical work, including the landmark Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English (1937), a standard work on the English language which has been published in multiple editions. It was followed by A Dictionary of the Underworld (1940), Chamber of Horrors, 'a glossary of official jargon' by Vigilans (1952), and Origins: A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English (1958).
Partridge was awarded an honorary doctorate of letters by the University of Queensland and an Honorary Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
