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

Many of the earliest books, particularly those dating back to the 1900s and before, are now extremely scarce and increasingly expensive. We are republishing these classic works in affordable, high quality, modern editions, using the original text and artwork.

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.

First published in 1940, this book was designed by Eric Partridge to equip students, studying for final exams at school, with the tools they needed to become successful précis-ers. The selection of literary pieces is more diverse than other preìcis books of the time and Partridge’s background as a schoolmaster, a lecturer and a publisher sets him up well to teach the subject.

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.

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.As well as giving the answers to questions about the derivation of individual words, it is a fascinating book to browse through, and includes extensive lists of prefixes, suffixes, and elements used in the creation of new vocabulary.

First published in 1961, this book explores the form of the comic alphabet. Whether through poems, prose or phonetics, the alphabet has become a way in which mankind has taken pleasure in playing with words and phrases. Indeed, approaches can vary significantly from the almost moronically humorous to the ingenious and genuinely witty and this book looks at the reasons how and why the comic alphabet came to possess the arguably sophisticated form in which people know it to...

First published in 1942, this dictionary was designed to help civilians and members of H.M. forces to make their way amid the jungle of wartime abbreviations. The preface notes that newspaper readers, sailors, soldiers and airmen had to thrust themselves, like explorers, into these abbreviations in search of truth, or the execution of their martial duty and hence, a dictionary was necessary. This book will be of interest to scholars of history and language, as well as the more general, int...

First published in 1933 (this edition in 1939), this book sees Partridge introducing the reader to the eccentric lexicographers Wesley and Captain Grose. In an entertaining way, the book jovially explores and discusses various words and phrases such as "bloody", euphemisms, the Devil’s nicknames, various versions of slang, and familiar terms of address. He does so with light-worn learning making the book of interest to a whole variety of readers.

First published in 1933, this book explores both contemporary and historical slang, focusing on the characteristics and quirks of the English and American languages. As well as looking at commonly used slang, there are sections that give the reader insight into more unusual areas such as Cockney slang, slang in journalism and slang in commerce, as well as slang used by sailors, the law and the church. The book will be of interest to scholars and the general readers who take an interest in ...

First published in 1940, this book provides a literary dictionary to the New Testament. The treatment of selected words and phrases is not theological, but lexicographical and etymological. Each entry is introduced by illustrative quotations from the New Testament, and the book provides an insightful exploration of these phrases.

This classic of Shakespeare scholarship begins with a masterly introductory essay analysing and exemplifying the various categories of sexual and non-sexual bawdy expressions and allusions in Shakespeare's plays and sonnets. The main body of the work consists of an alphabetical glossary of all words and phrases used in a sexual or scatological sense, with full explanations and cross-references.