A Dictionary of Slang? Whoever Heard of Such a Thing?


by Lisa Koosis - Date: 2007-01-09 - Word Count: 379 Share This!

Have you ever heard two people talking, both technophiles perhaps, or people who work in the financial field, and they bandied about so many unfamiliar terms that you wondered if they were speaking another language? I remember feeling that way for my first few weeks on my last job in the health insurance industry. They jostled about so many terms and acronyms that it was literally impossible to follow a conversation without stopping seventeen times to ask, "What does that mean?"

"Slang! The Topic-By-Topic Dictionary of Contemporary American Lingoes" by Paul Dickson, is a great resource in decoding the nuances of expressions from many different corridors whether Hollywood or Wall Street, sports or politics.

Have you ever heard the term "vaporware," or "Rumpie"? I hadn't, at least not until I browsed the pages of "Slang!".

Laid out in sections by subject matter, "Slang!" is easy to navigate and even includes a comprehensive index of terms at the end, which makes finding an individual term as easy as it gets. It includes categories such as Advertising and Public Relations, Auctionese, Automotive Slang, and Yuppies, Dinks and Other Moderns.

This is a great book for reference, ideal for someone entering a terminology-heavy industry who just wants to get an idea of basic terminology. It would also make a good addition to a writer's reference library, particularly for fiction writers, for which it would make a great tool for added depth of story and characterization.

It's also, however, a fun and interesting book just for browsing, and would make a great gift for a fan of words and/or trivia.

The downside to a book like this is inherent in its very nature. Terminology changes, and often quite quickly, particularly in certain industries such as technology and computers. And let's face it -- the section on teenage and high school slang is bound to be outdated before the book even hits the shelves. It's just the nature of the beast.

Still, the edition I have is an older edition and the book is still in print, the newest edition having hit the shelves in 2006. So it is being updated. This is potentially a book that will need to be replaced on a regular basis, but for someone in need of such a reference tool, it might be worth your while.


Related Tags: language, terms, slang, dictionary, dictionaries, terminology, jargon, acronyms

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