Booklist Top of the List Reference Source 2006 The successor to The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English – Eric Partridge’s magnum opus – this all-new work retains the humour and energy of its forebear, and continues the Partridge tradition for a new millennium. The culmination of years of research, this Dictionary features sources ranging from fanzines, through movie scripts, to classic twentieth-century literature. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: new two-volume format, containing over 60,000 entries in 2,000 pages unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean  new emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. Edited by Tom Dalzell, an author, lawyer and leading expert on American slang, and Terry Victor, a slang-collector actor, broadcaster, writer and director, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English  is a monumental achievement, and anyone with a fascination or passion for language will delight in the wit and intelligence of this invaluable resource.

Product Description: This dictionary gives the origins of some 20,000 items from the modern English vocabulary, discussing them in groups that make clear the connections between words derived by a variety of routes from originally common stock. As well as giving the answers to questions about the derivation of individual words, it is a fascinating book to browse through, since every page points out links with other entries...read more

Product Description: During the First World War the British soldiers were renowned for their chirpy songs and plucky sayings. Indeed nothing would lift the spirits of the often exhausted and demoralized troops more than a hearty sing-a-long. These cheery and at times ribald and satiric songs and sayings have been collected together to give a fascinating insight into the more lighthearted side of trench life...read more

Product Description: Up till the publication of the "Lyrical Ballads", 1798.

Product Description: Partridge, Eric, Compiler. A Dictionary of the Underworld, British and American. Being the Vocabularies of Crooks, Criminals, Racketeers, Beggars and Tramps, Convicts, the Commercial Underworld, the Drug Traffic, the White Slave Traffic, Spivs...read more

Drawn from the Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, with the emphasis on the expressions used or coined before 1914.

This standard work on punctuation has long been judged the foremost study of the subject. It reveals punctuation to be both an indispensable craft and an invaluable art - a friend not an enemy.

Product Description: The definitive work on slang and unconventional English, this edition is fully revised and updated by Paul Beale and includes some 500 new entries. The dictionary gives a fully documented account of English slang over four centuries and will entertain and inform all lovers of the English language...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Here Partridge combined a detailed knowledge of Shakespeare and Elizabethan slang/innuendo to create 'a literary and psychological essay and a comprehensive glossary' of this long-avoided aspect of Shakespeare criticism. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Usage and Abusage takes a long, hard look at the use and constant misuse of English. Declaring war on bad grammar, woolliness of expression and poor choice of vocabulary, this essential guide sets out both to highlight problems and pitfalls and to offer constructive advice on the proper use of English...read more

An entertaining and useful reference updated for the 1990s is designed to assist the reader in avoiding misuses of the English language when trying to write or speak clearly and directly. Reprint. LJ. BAKER & TAYLOR

Product Description: This work examines the best and worst uses of English in order to help speakers, writers and thinkers express themselves more clearly. It looks at archism, echoism, obscurity and tautology, and should be useful as reference book.

Explains the origins and meanings of popular phrases

Product Description: A catch phrase is a well-known, frequently-used phrase or saying that has `caught on' or become popular over along period of time. It is often witty or philosophical and this Dictionary gathers together over 7,000 such phrases.

Amazon.com Review: Wordslinger Eric Partridge intended his dictionary to be a "humble companion" to the Oxford English Dictionary--a ribald companion is more like it! In Partridge's domain, a gentleman's pleasure-garden has little to do with the horticultural, referring as it does to the genitalia muliebria...read more

Revised and updated to include some 500 new entries, this 'Dictionary' gives a full account of slang and unconventional English over four centuries and aims to entertain and inform all language-lovers.

Product Description: This work is full of things better left unsaid: hackneyed phrases, idioms battered into senselessness, infuriating Gallicisms, once-familiar quotations and tags from the ancient classics. It makes a formidable list, amplified as it is with definitions, sources, and indications of the clichés, venerability in every case...read more

Product Description: This etymological dictionary gives the origins of some 20,000 items from the modern English vocabulary, discussing them in groups that make clear the connections between words derived by a variety of routes from originally common stock...read more