words and language

This dictionary is an absolute must-have for every writer, fiction or nonfiction. We haven't found a better slang dictionary yet. It has virtually all the slang words in there, words that you just won't find anywhere else. One of the very nice and helpful features is that it tells you in what year the word was used first and susequently, and in which publication (book or newspaper, etc.), and how the meaning changed over the course of the decades. The dictionary also has sentence examples on how the word was used, e.g. in which context, so you know exactly when and how to use it in your applications. It's just very interesting to find out the original meaning and usage of certain slang words and to enrich your own vocabulary. We highly recommend it!

In the library, I did a side-by-side comparison of this book (Chapman: Dictionary of American Slang, 3rd ed., 1995) with: (a) Spears, Richard: NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions, 3rd ed., 2000 and (b) Green, Jonathon: Cassell Dictionary of Slang, 1998. The advantages of this dictionary over the other two are: (1) some words and phrases are in this book but not the other two (e.g., "love bug," "love me, love my dog"); (2) it gives specific quotations and sources (e.g., "Had Feldstein deliberately low-balled the original numbers? - Newsweek"); (3) it indicates what sort of people originated or might use the word/phrase (e.g. "lot louse... [used in the] circus"); and (4) thorough cross-references are integrated into the body of the dictionary (e.g., "love, see CALF LOVE, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, PUPPY LOVE"). It has 617 pages and claims to have 19,000 entries, which is between the other two books. On the other hand, the Cassell Dictionary contains a large percentage of the entries in this book as well as many more entries, and it's the oldest of the three dictionaries. Still, if you had to buy only one of the three, this is probably the one to get.

If you're into words, slang, and idioms like I am, then you probably already own a reference book like this and realize that you need at least 2-3 similar books to find the real nuances of meaning that you want.

This book definitely qualifies to be one of them. The definitions are thoughtful and precise, and there are significantly fewer 'disappointments' (at lousy or omitted definitions/terms) than with other books of it's kind.