Lewis Jarrette Poteet was born in Watonga, Oklahoma, in 1940. His father, Henry T. Poteet, was a Nazarene pastor, and the Poteet family moved to South Africa, for missionary work, between 1946 and 1952, returning to the United States in 1952. Poteet attended the Bethany Nazarene College (now Southern Nazarene University) in Bethany, Oklahoma, from 1957 to 1961, earning his bachelor's degree. He then attended the University of Oklahoma in 1961-62, earning an M.A. in English, and taught at the University of Minnesota from 1962 to 1964. In 1967, he came to Montreal and was appointed assistant professor in the Department of English at Sir George Williams University (one of the two founding institutions of Concordia University). He was promoted to the position of associate professor in 1972, and retired in 1998. Poteet's passion for language led him to study slang expressions, and he compiled several books on the subject: The South Shore Phrase Book (1983), The Hockey Phrase Book, co-authored with his son, Aaron (1987), Talking Country: The Eastern Townships Phrase Book (1992), Car and Motorcycle Slang, co-authored with his brother Jim (1992), Plane Talk: Push You, Pull Me, co-authored with Martin J. Stone (1997), Cop Talk (2000), and Push Me Pull Me: A Dictionary of Aviation Slang, co-authored with Martin J. Stone (2013). He also wrote numerous essays and papers on unexplored aspects of language. In 2005, he was asked to be the Canadian contributor to the revision of the Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English.