Customer Reviews

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang

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The dictionary is fantastic .Tracing slang from the 16th century to the present is no mean feat.However, the omission of some slang expressions , namely between a rock and a hard place or couldn't organize a two-car funeral , is odd.I personally prefer dictioaries that are organized according to keywords rather than alphabetically , but considering everything ,the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.

This is really a unique resource.

I have been doing work on the period around 1900 and wanted to learn which slang was in use then and which wasn't. There were a number of late 19th century slang dictionaries you can find, and monographs on college slang, criminal slang, etc.

But most of the other reference books are no help. DARE looks deeply at some, seemingly randomly chosen, terms, but misses the vast majority.

Chambers Slang Dictionary actually tells you when the word was used, and often where specifically. You can search it on Google books, which is a great help because that's the one problem with a print copy: you can't look up by definition. You should do that because you'll see how much info is in each entry.

But buy the book, it's fun just to sit and read the entries.

I've spent a decent amount of money on reference materials recently and this is the one item I can honestly say is worth several times what I paid for it.