With its unparalleled coverage of English slang of all types (from 18th-century cant to contemporary gay slang), and its uncluttered editorial apparatus, Cassell's Dictionary of Slang was warmly received when its first edition appeared in 1998. 'Brilliant.' said Mark Lawson on BBC2's The Late Review; 'This is a terrific piece of work - learned, entertaining, funny, stimulating' said Jonathan Meades in The Evening Standard.But now the world's best single-volume dictionary of English slang is about to get even better. Jonathon Green has spent the last seven years on a vast project: to research in depth the English slang vocabulary and to hunt down and record written instances of the use of as many slang words as possible. This has entailed trawling through more than 4000 books - plus song lyrics, TV and movie scripts, and many newspapers and magazines - for relevant material. The research has thrown up some fascinating results

Contains over 65,000 slang words, definitions, where and when the word originated, and more.

Want rice and Aberdeens for dinner? Or andy mcnish--wouldn't that be apples and spice? It's rhyme time, and this witty, wildly inventive dictionary will inform you those "code words" stand for beans, fish, and nice. Amazingly detailed, it includes a history of rhyming slang, 100 categories, and over 2,500 phrases. Best of all, it takes a "bilingual" approach that lets you learn new slang while looking up the old!

Brings together devastating views on figures as diverse as Churchill, John F. Kennedy, Shakespeare, James Joyce and Marilyn MonroeIncludes coverage of national insults, and attacks on professions, institutions and placesFull author indexNow in paperback

Idioms are the expressions peculiar to any language, and English is about as peculiar as languages come! Why do people "argue the toss"?; and how do people "bring home the bacon"? This volume provides a full and thorough guide to both the most recent and more archaic turns of phrase.