Author Description

If you're a cube when it comes to def jam, if you know zilch about five-finger discounts, or are gob-smacked by the meeja, then read on... Over 5,000 twentieth-century slang words and phrases are presented from throughout the English-speaking world. Each headword is defined, with the date of its first appearance in print, while thousands of quotations - from authors as diverse as John Lennon, Raymond Chandler, Germaine Greer, and Woody Allen - illustrate the use of slang words and senses. Coverage ranges in date from the very earliest slang still in use (gob, 1550) to contemporary coinages (gob-struck, 1988), and embraces the English-speaking world, with examples from - among others - Britain (goggle-box, wazzock, steaming, wide boy), America (grody, baglady, dweeb, home-boy), and Australia (nasho, chunder, crim, illywhacker). The authors have drawn on the Oxford English Dictionary and its unpublished files, and the dictionary contains some 500 words which have not previously appeared in the OED.