Dictionary of Contemporary Slang

By Tony Thorne

Book Overview

With more than 7,000 definitions, this book provides a definitive guide to the use of slang today. It deals with drugs, sport and contemporary society, as well as favourite slang topics such as sex... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679737065
• ISBN13: 9780679737063
• Release Date: November 1991
• Publisher: Pantheon Books
• Length: 583 Pages
• Weight: 1.45 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.3" x 5.5" x 9.1"

Customer Reviews

good browsing, good reference

This is makes for good browsing OR handy reference. You can discover the meaning of an unfamiliar word or the origin of a word you know. For that matter, you can find new terms with which to jazz up your own sentences. It's particularly interesting for us Americans to learn about British slang along with our own. Did you know a "bath-dodger" is, in British-speak, "an unwashed or habitually dirty individual"? Some of these are worth adopting!It's easy on the eyes and easy to find what you want (plenty of white space, and main entries in bold type).Definitions are written in clear ordinary language, and examples are given where useful. There's everything from the graphically sexual to the criminal to the eminently printable like "mugwump" and "penguin suit". There are ones you never heard of and there are vocabulary staples ("cool", "OK"). This was published in 1990, so anything newer won't be here, but that's not saying much.