Dictionary of American Slang

by Barbara Ann Kipfer, Robert Chapman (Contributor)

The authoritative guide to the language of the twenty-first century, completely revised edition.

Genres: Reference, Nonfiction, Linguistics

Paperback

First published February 17, 1998

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

[Ron Law · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great reference book! Thorough and interesting.

[Yaaresse · Rating 3 out of 5]

Rating: Reading enjoyment = 2, Depth of content= 3, Functionality = 3

For advanced ESL students who can function well in English but are sometimes puzzled by a turn of phrase or reference that just makes no sense in translation, this dictionary would be a definite asset. For native speakers, there's probably not that much in it that you don't already know.

I admit to skimming the second half. I love stuff about how language evolves and idioms, but I'm not enough of a language nerd that I can sit down and read lists and dictionaries for very long. After a while, it becomes as exciting as reading the ingredients list for shampoo.

Most of the charm of idioms for me comes from learning how a phrase developed and where it began and was adopted. While this book does a good job of explaining the meanings of slang phrases, it fell short for me in the etymology and linguistic geography departments. I would have been happier with more depth even had it meant less breadth. Also, I'm shelving this as dated content because the only thing that gets outdated faster than slang is technology.

[Charity · Rating 4 out of 5]

I haven't heard some of these in ages. A nice trip down the late seventies-early eighties lane. I particularly enjoyed the swear words. Yes, I'm twelve apparently. Loads of phrases originated in 1940, which I found fascinating for some reason. As a high school English teacher, I think this is highly valuable. My AP Lang students are getting a lesson in slang next semester.
One star off for the overly-lengthy beginning, and the simplistic navigation.