Customer Reviews

NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

In the library, I did a side-by-side comparison of this book (Spears: NTC's Dictionary..., 3rd ed., 2000) with: (a) Green, Jonathon: Cassell Dictionary of Slang, 1998, and (b) Chapman, Robert: Dictionary of American Slang, 3rd ed., 1995. The advantages of this dictionary over the other two are: (1) some words/phrases are in this book but not the other two (e.g., "kipe," "WYSIWYG"); (2) it has more examples of usage in context (usually two per entry); and (3) it is less expensive. On the other hand, this book has: (1) far fewer pages (xv+560) and entries (about 10,000) than the other two books; (2) only a rare indication of when a word/phrase was first in common usage; (3) little info on what sort of people (e.g., "students") originated or might use the word/phrase; (4) a "Phrase-Finder Index" (pp.485-560) whose entries should have been integrated in the body of the dictionary; and (5) wasted space in the "Phrase-Finder Index" when a given word is at the beginning of a phrase (e.g., under "aces" it's good to have "hold all the aces" but worthless to have "ace boom-boom," "ace boon-coon," and "ace in the hole" since these are on pp.2-3). Hey, buy all three from Amazon.com!

Neatly printed and easy to use. It has approximately90 per cent of the slangexpressions that I have"looked-up" and is a goodbuy for the price.

I like this little dictionary very much. It contains most of the up to dated slang or expressions that we heard from movies, co-workers and TV. I can find more than 95% of the expressions I want to know in this neat and useful dictionary. It is also made of good quality paper and won't wear out easily. I recommend it to all foreign students, new comers just arrive North America, or even to those who want to know our latest colloquial expressions.

The book is an excellent tool to learn and understand a lot of expression people use in the United States and not only it offers the meaning, but suggests how and when you can use each phrase or word.

If you are studying English now, or you are a new immigrant trying to assimilate this new culture, this book has to be in your bookcase, but even for natives the book educates how use each word, because even the "bad words" are listed.

I expected to find a comprehensive dictionary for slang expressions and idioms, but I still had a hard time comprehending web sites and follow talks, because I found only few and easy to understand idioms in this book. Also the overlapping between this book and "American Idioms Dictionary" is disappointing.

I like this book much better

I received the dictionary from amazon.com recently. I like this book because of the examples provided, which are clear and helpful. Compared with the other author, Robert Chapman, of a similar dictionary, I feel this author is much better, because Dr. Spears sounds very down-to-earth and he never appears showy by providing unnecessary or useless information just to make a book thicker so to speak.

I hope Dr. Spears can publish other new books that I will love to read.

Delivery was quick and the book description was as described. However, I actually needed to return the book. When I inquired twice about Book Mavens' return policy, the professional courtesy of a reply was never provided. A return and refund could not be accomplished.