This dictionary is an intended consequence of a larger project, the New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, in which Terry Victor and I updated the work of Eric Partridge. Contributors from around the globe supported us as we recorded and defined the slang of the English-speaking world since the end of World War 2. We worked hard to continue the Partridge tradition, observing his high standards of lexicography while producing an accessible work informed by, and infused with, the humor, mischief and energy that are endemic to slang.

In its narrowest sense, a synonym is a word or phrase that is perfectly substitutable in a context for another word or phrase. People who study language professionally agree that there is no such thing as an ideal synonym, for it is virtually impossible to find two words or phrases that are identical in denotation (meaning), connotation, frequency, familiarity, and appropriateness. Indeed, linguists have long noted the economy of language, which suggests that no language permits a perfect fit, in all respects, between any two words or phrases.

This is the first dictionary entirely devoted to new words and meanings to have been published by the Oxford University Press. It follows in the tradition of the Supplement to the Oxford English Dictionary in attempting to record the history of some recent additions to the language, but, unlike the Supplement, it is necessarily very selective in the words, phrases, and meanings whose stories it sets out to tell and it stands as an independent work, unrelated (except in the resources it draws upon) to the Oxford English Dictionary.

This document is a collection of slang terms used by various subcultures of computer hackers. Though some technical material is included for background and flavor, it is not a technical dictionary; what we describe here is the language hackers use among themselves for fun, social communication, and technical debate.

The Hutchinson Illustrated Encyclopedia of British History is a reference book, with entries arranged in A–Z format. To go directly to a particular entry, click on the link in the table of contents. There are also links between entries – click on any underlined word to jump to the related entry.

Gathering terms for an aerospace dictionary is harder than it looks. I recently studied a list of terms used by the US Air Force to describe the status of each of its component organizations. They explained ‘These actions are defined in ways that may seem arcane to the nonspecialist, but each term has a specific meaning…’

This dictionary has been compiled from extensive evidence of the quotations that are actually used in this way. The dictionary includes the commonest quotations which were found in a collection of more than 200,000 citations assembled by combing books, magazines, and newspapers. For example, our collections contained more than thirty examples each for Edward Heath’s “unacceptable face of capitalism” and Marshal McLuhan’s “The medium is the message,” so both these quotations had to be included.

A book about the English language - or about any individual language is a daring.enterprise, for it has as many perceptive cities as there are fluent readers. The language as a whole belongs to no one, yet everyone owns a part of it, has an interest in it, and has an opinion about it…

Susan Ellis Wild has been a practicing lawyer since 1982, and currently is a fulltime litigator in Allentown, Pennsylvania. She is President of the 600+ member Bar Association of Lehigh County, Pennsylvania. Susan has litigated more than 100 cases and frequently writes and speaks to audiences about law-related topics. She has been appointed by courts on numerous occasions to act as an independent arbitrator/mediator of cases. Susan is admitted to the Bars of Pennsylvania, the District of Columbia, and Maryland, and has appeared in courts in a number of other states.

This volume has been derived from the magisterial work of Eric Partridge and his collaborator and successor Paul Beale. Most of the entries have been adapted from material in the second edition (1985) of the classic A Dictionary of Catch Phrases, although articles have also been specially written for items that came into currency in the 1990s.

The focus throughout is on expressions that are in current daily use, and familiar throughout most parts of the English-speaking world. Items originating in Britain, the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand are all to be found within these covers. We at Routledge are proud to publish this companion volume to the Shorter Dictionary of Slang (1993) as a tribute to Eric Partridge on the occasion of the centenary of his birth on 6 February 1894.