Customer Reviews

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang

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Reaching back into English for some centuries and reaching through English as it's written & spoken today in many nations, this dictionary offers what seems a unique guide to the use of words and more particularly, phrases, that I can't find defined in any other work. Indispensable for those who really want to understand exactly what they're reading.

While I respect the Californian reader's suggestion that potential buyers also consider two other slang dictionaries, I point out that Green's work goes far beyond only American usages. There's plenty here about English, New Zealand, Canadian, Australian, and other variants of English.

Nice touch: the editor's introduction comes complete with an e-mail address. Any reader who finds a usage that Jonathon Green doesn't know about, is free to send it in for future editions. But I personally find few usages that Jonathon Green doesn't know about.

Excellent work but, because of attention paid to "rude words", probably not a good gift for children.

One of the most interesting aspects of any language is the study of idiomatic and colloquial expressions. The use(or understanding)of slang words indicates a person's true command of a language. Here we have one of the greatest collections of modern slang words in the English language (as opposed to the analogous work on historical slang by Partridge - Lighter's superb work 'Historical Dictionary of American Slang' is alas still unfinished). Moreover, it seems that Green's purpose was to provide an extensive list of terms rather than give detailed etymologies. Hence, the entries are abundant yet concise. There may not be the analytical observations and quotations that one would find in Tony Thorne's 'Dictionary of Contemporary Slang'(the enlarged 3rd edition has just come out)but there are many more words and phrases.
It is true that perhaps any specific dictionary of slang such as a dictionary specialising in the slang of the underworld or Afro-American slang etc. might have a slighly larger collection of those particular terms. However, this mammoth work covers every possible area of slang. Perhaps there are far too many entries on sexual slang (and associated perverted practices etc.) than I would have liked. Yet perhaps the author thought that their exclusion could have made the work defective or lacking in some way. Indeed, it is unfortunate that the connotations of the word 'slang' have changed so that now 'slang' no longer means just colloquial jargon but the obscene tongue. This dictionary is thus also a reflection of this new meaning. However, despite the profusion of dubious/unsavoury entries, the dictionary is also rich in other forms of slang such as criminal slang, rhyming slang, black American slang and post-war slang. There are also many racist slang terms, many of which were first presented in the author's interesting work "Words Apart: The Language of Prejudice" (1996) in which he compiled an immense list of ethnic insults and nicknames. Not only has he incorporated most of these in this great dictionary but he has also added many more similar phrases. For instance, the word 'French', which is often used in conjunction with phrases that pertain to some form of sexual deviance, appears in a wide vairiety of other expressions too: Frenchwoman (i.e. fortune-teller)and French harp (harmonica), etc. The Spaniards also come in for some abuse with terms like Spanish time (unpunctuality), and Spanish waiter (potato) is an example of rhyming slang. Similarly Mexican oats means nonsense and either a Mexican jeep or a Mexican carriage is a donkey. Moreover, the word 'Dutch' (which across the Atlantic refers to someone from Holland, not Germany) is used in phrases like a Dutch nightingale (a frog). There are also several similar expressions with a host of other nationalities such as the Irish. However, for a much more extensive list of phrases with the word 'Irish'(with not only similar jocular phrases but many other expressions besides) one should read the book by Thornton B.Edwards "Irish! A Dictionary of Phrases, Terms and Epithets beginning with the word 'Irish'". His other book "Welsh Nots, Welsh Notes and Welsh Nuts" is a similar collection of phrases with the word 'Welsh' (see my reviews of both of these books here). There are many slang entries from both these books with the words 'Irish' and 'Welsh' that have not been included in Green's dictionary. Similarly Smead's excellent work 'Vocabulario Vaquero' provides several extra slang phrases with the words 'Spanish' and 'Mexican'. Yet I envisage that such missing entries from these and many other books will no doubt be incorporated in any revised supplemeted editions of this great work. Green has already included so much in this first edition. It is a materpiece as well as an invaluable contribution to (and record of) the English language. It belongs to every bookshelf.

If you, like me, live in a non english speaking country and love and teach the english language for a living, you definitely should have a copy of this book alongside a good regular dictionary. And even if english is your mother tongue you should get this book too. Of course all those swearing words are there but there is a lot more than that, there are plenty of cultural references in here that will help you to understand the origins of many terms so used on our daily lives and to discover how language adapts with time and space.

Very comprehensive, and as a amatuer linguist, this is one of my favorite word books (I have dozens). You will find entries here that you won't even find in the 20-volume Oxford-English Dictionary. Unquestionably the best book on slang out there. Some of the definitions tend to be short, but obviously this had to be done to allow for more entries. Some of the words though is does go into some depth and history, for instance the word 'sockdolager', it mentions it was one of last words Abe Lincoln heard, which used as adjective form as 'sockdolagizing' spoken by character Asa Trenchard in Tom Taylor play "Our American Cousin". This book is a great buy for book lovers, but as one reviewer stated, avoid giving to young kids due to some of the explicit nature of many of the words.

Just a quickie- this book is very useful for writers and is simply a lot of fun to read. I recommend it without reservations.

In the library, I did a side-by-side comparison of this book (Green: Cassell Dictionary..., 1998) with: (a) Spears, Richard: NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions, 3rd ed., 2000 and (b) Chapman, Robert: Dictionary of American Slang, 3rd ed., 1995. The advantages of this dictionary over the other two are: (1) it has the most pages (1,312) and entries (65,000) of the three, (2) it has British expressions as well as American, and (3) it has some slang that is no longer in common use, and indicates what sort of people originated or might use the word/phrase (e.g., "lowland n. [1930s-60s] (US Black)"). On the other hand, this book has: (1) relatively small print, and (2) virtually no examples of usage in context. Hey, buy all three from Amazon.com!