In this richly entertaining book, Jonathon Green traces the development of slang and its trajectory through society, and offers an impassioned argument for its defence. Beginning, at least in recorded terms, in the gutter and the thieves' tavern, and displayed only in a few criminological pamphlets, slang has made its way up and out: across social classes and into every medium.There is no doubt that slang deals with those areas of life that standard English often chooses to sideste...

Jonothan Green offers a time trip from lat-fifties CND, beatniks and bop to the threshold of our own decade's designer revolutionaries and style warriors. . . His chosen form is the oral history pioneered by Studs Terkel in which cross-cut voices recount a shared experience or epoch. . . what anecdotes!'Guardian. Green has collected 101 quintessential sixties groovers and lovingly teased out their memories, all of them refreshingly self-critical and remarkably sharpened by hindsight. 'Glas...

First published in 1987, the Dictionary of Jargon expands on its predecessor Newspeak (Routledge Revivals, 2014) as an authoritative reference guide to specialist occupational slang, or jargon. Containing around 21, 000 entries, the dictionary encompasses a truly eclectic range of fields and includes extensive coverage of both British and U.S. jargon. Areas dealt with range from marketing to medicine, from advertising to artificial intelligence and from skiing to...

Slang, however one judges it, shows us at our most human. It is used widely and often, typically associated with the writers of noir fiction, teenagers, and rappers, but also found in the works of Shakespeare and Dickens. It has been recorded since at least 1500 AD, and today's vocabulary, taken from every major English-speaking country, runs to over 125,000 slang words and phrases. This Very Short Introduction takes readers on a wide-ranging tour of this fascinating sub-set of th...

'If you're up for an adventure through the back alleys of English, The Stories of Slang will not disappoint.' Kory Stamper, Times Literary Supplement'Few lexicographers are lucky enough to have both endlessly pleasurable work and the talent to write amusingly about [slang]. Jonathon Green is one . . . Lovers of language should be grateful to those who create slang, and to those few like Mr Green who make it their work to open this window into the p...

'In terms of a non-fiction account of how historical and contemporary language has been shaped by women, I really recommend lexicographer Jonathon Green's Sounds and Furies'ELEY WILIAMS, author of The Liar's Dictionary'When it comes to distaff dirtiness, mainstream males such as Dickens and Dekker make easy pickings, but Green finds the greatest treasures when he mudlarks on the margins. In Sounds & Furies, he has dredged u...

Slang, however one judges it, shows us at our most human. It is used widely and often, typically associated with the writers of noir fiction, teenagers, and rappers, but also found in the works of Shakespeare and Dickens. It has been recorded since at least 1500 AD, and today's vocabulary, taken from every major English-speaking country, runs to over 125,000 slang words and phrases. This Very Short Introduction takes readers on a wide-ranging tour of this fascinating sub-set of th...

Space Marines and their evil counterparts, the Traitor Marines, epitomise the wartorn Warhammer 40,000 universe. This short story collection focuses entirely on these super human warriors, telling high-action tales of heroism and savagery. Combining the talents of Black Library favourite authors such as Mike Lee and Nick Kyme with hot new talent, this collection is truly not to be missed!Read it becauseThis short story collection focuses entirely on the Spac...

How on earth did 'with bells on' come to express enthusiasm? What do chips on shoulders have to do with inferiority complexes? And who is the face that launched a thousand ships? Did you know that 'the rule of thumb' refers to the use of the thumb to make measurements, as the first joint of the average adult thumb measures one inch?Spilling the Beans on the Cat's Pyjamas provides us with the meanings of these well-worn and much-loved phrases by putting these linguistic quir...

The Etymologicon springs from Mark Forsyth's Inky Fool blog about the strange connections between words. The Horologicon – which means 'a book of things appropriate to each hour' - follows a day in the life of unusual, beautiful and forgotten English words.

Would you be down in the dumps if, when asked the definition of certain phrases, it was all Greek to you? Let's not beat about the bush: the English language is littered with linguistic quirks, which, out of context, seem completely peculiar. If you can't quite cut the mustard, this book will explain how on earth 'off the cuff' came to express improvisation, why a 'gut feeling' is more intuitive than a brainwave, and who the heck is 'happy' Larry. These expressions and countless more becom...

Are we tired of hearing that fall is a season, sick of being offered fries and told about the latest movie? Yeah. Have we noticed the sly interpolation of Americanisms into our everyday speech? You betcha. And are we outraged? Hell, yes. But do we do anything? Too much hassle. Until now.In That's The Way It Crumbles Matthew Engel presents a call to arms against the linguistic impoverishment that happens when on...