American Slang

by Barbara Ann Kipfer

With 1,500 new words and phrases, this abridged edition of the Dictionary of American Slang is the most buzzworthy, banging collection of colloquial American English—no joke

This fully updated and abridged fourth edition of American Slang contains more than 1,500 new terms representing the variety and vigor of American slang, from "yada yada yada" to "yo momma." There's no better resource for those who are curious about language, fascinated by counterculture, or just completely confused when other people talk.

Like previous editions, this edition features pronunciation guides, word origins, examples of appropriate usage as well as a helpful highlighting system that lets you know which terms should be used with caution, and never in polite company. Both an important archive of the way America is really talking and a lot of fun to read, American Slang will prove to be an invaluable companion in keeping up with the dauntingly jargon-filled, quickly evolving language of today.

Genres: Reference, Writing, Dictionaries, Nonfiction, Language

576 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 1987

About the author

Dr. Barbara Ann Kipfer (born in 1954) is a lexicographer,as well as an archaeologist. She has written more than 60 books, including 14,000 Things to be Happy About (Workman), which has more than a million copies in print and has given rise to many Page-a-Day calendars. The 25th anniversary edition of the book was published in October 2014. She is the editor of Roget's International Thesaurus.

Kipfer is Chief Lexicographer of the company Temnos. She has worked for such companies as Google, Dictionary.com and Thesaurus.com, Answers.com, Ask Jeeves, Bellcore/Telcordia, Federated Media Publishing, General Electric Research, IBM Research, idealab, Knowledge Adventure, Textdigger, The Chicago Tribune, and WolframAlpha. Barbara holds a PhD and MPhil in Linguistics (University of Exeter), a PhD in Archaeology (Greenwich University), an MA and a PhD in Buddhist Studies (Akamai University), and a BS in Physical Education (Valparaiso University).

(from Wikipedia)

Reviews

[Charlene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Funny book

[max · Rating 3 out of 5]

Back in the day, Dr. Robert Chapman, the distinguished lexicographer and author of this book, was a professor of mine at Drew University. He was a kind and learned man with an encyclopedic knowledge of English literature and a deep love of words and their origins. He wore a deerstalker hat, a goatee, and rode around campus on a bicycle that seemed to have been manufactured many years before my time. I remember him fondly.

I am not sure if this dictionary would still be considered current -- slang dictionaries have notoriously short shelf lives -- but it is very thorough and remains useful. Here is an important point about slang dictionaries. A word or phrase that you won't find in one (even a very large one) you will likely find in another. I recently looked up a word in the monster-sized The Routledge Dictionary of Modern American Slang and Unconventional English and did not find it. Sure enough, when I turned to an earlier edition (1986) of this book, there it was.

[Josi Rebar · Rating 4 out of 5]

Not as good as the international book of slang.