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8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best book of british slang needed when traveling to the UK, November 19, 1998
By A Customer
This review is from: Ntc's Dictionary of British Slang and Colloquial Expressions (National Textbook Language Dictionaries) (Hardcover)
This is one of the best slang dictonaries you will need when traveling to the UK. The way it gives you examples of the word being used is very helpful. Everyone should buy this book even if they are not traveling to the UK.
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5 of 7 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Best of its kind, August 17, 2000
This review is from: Ntc's Dictionary of British Slang and Colloquial Expressions (National Textbook Language Dictionaries) (Hardcover)
it is exactly what the title denotes and , what's more important, surely the best around (Believe me I have really searched). Everything that you need to know is here and tons more. Most of the times an 'entry' is accompanied by not one but TWO different examples so that the meaning be clear. The only thing I would have also liked to see would be description of the slang terms using the phonetic alphabet so that one gets the correct pronunciation as well -only for the equivocal slang words really.
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1 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good in parts: interesting but often dated and seems to be padded., October 28, 2008
NTC's Dictionary of British Slang and Colloquial Expressions is an interesting book and I use it occasionally when I'm writing and need a colourful expression from British slang, particularly an older expression, or when I want to translate some old British slang into Standard English. However, having said that, this book is not all that it's cracked up to be; that is to say, it ought to be better than it is.
For a start, a fair percentage of the entries are dated, and haven't been heard in vernacular speech in Britain for pig's ears, or even donkey's years. It also leaves out the various argot that has become part of London's particular subdialect of English since the 1960s, the Swinging '60s, a language all its own. (The 1960s were clearly the halcyon days of British slang, particularly London slang, when it achieved wide currency through much of the English-speaking world and closely rivalled, and in some cases even supplanted, American slang expressions for the dominant position of most-used English-language slang abroad.) An example of the inadequacy of the NTC's Dictionary's entries follows: if one were to say to you that a particular play was "doing boffo biz" in London's West End, you could probably work it out that the play was doing well and making a useful sum of money. But in this dictionary, all words with the root "boff-" either refer to the buttocks, a research scientist (the familiar "boffin" from Second World War parlance), to punching a person, or refer to assorted sexual activities or participants therein. But no "boffo" as in "boffo biz". Even the entry for "biz" is askew with the definition referring to equipment for injecting drugs and absolutely no mention that "biz" is merely short for "business". Regrettably, a lot of entries (and I say too many) concern slang expressions for various aspects of sex and there seems to be a definite bias in including these.
Then a lot of the entries are words that are slang expressions common to just about every English-speaking country in the world and some are directly lifted from American slang, e.g. "crack house", which is clearly hardly of British origin. I sometimes get the feeling with this book that the author was trying to "pad it out" by including some words which are often and for the most part irrelevant to a dictionary of British slang and colloquial expressions.
However, he does get it right on occasion and, as I have implied, the book covers a good number and cross-section of colourful expressions of British provenance and is a useful resource for writers and perhaps tertiary-level students and academics. However, I can't say I can see that it is particularly useful for tourists or expats from other English-speaking countries, particularly those from North America, travelling, staying, or living in the UK. So like the curate's egg, I would have to say that NTC's Dictionary of British Slang and Colloquial Expressions is good in parts--"the curate's egg" being another old but still very current British slang expression which is omitted from NTC's Dictionary.
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by Jonathan Bernstein
