American Slang: The Abridged Edition of the Dictionary of American Slang

by Robert L. Chapman, Barbara Ann Kipfer

From cowpokes to cyber punks , from flappers to gangsta rappers, American Slang chronicles the ever-evolving, informal, unconventional language we use every day. Expanded and completely updated, this 2nd edition contains thousands of contemporary and traditional slang expressions, including the newest computer lingo and slang from the Internet. Entries

Genres: Reference, Writing, Dictionaries, Nonfiction, Language

592 pages, Paperback

First published September 16, 1987

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.