Best Selling Books by Jonathon Green

From more than 1,000 ways to call somebody a fool to politically incorrect zingers, this is true glee for the clever and catty. "Will delight language lovers with a high-tolerance for vulgarity, ethnic slurs, and all-around contempt."--"New York Daily News. "Enlightening and entertaining."--"New York Post.

''In terms of a non-fiction account of how historical and contemporary language has been shaped by women, I really recommend lexicographer Jonathon Green''s Sounds and Furies'' ELEY WILIAMS, author of The Liar''s Dictionary ''When it comes to distaff dirtiness, mainstream males such as Dickens and Dekker make easy pickings, but Green finds the greatest treasures when he mudlarks on the margins. In Sounds & Furies, he has dredged up some gems.'' EMMA BYRNE, Spectator ''From fishwives to flappers and from music hall performers to Mumsnetters, women have indeed made contributions to the slang vocabulary of English; by bringing together so much fascinating material about their words and their worlds, this book makes its own contribution to the history of both women and language.'' PROFESSOR DEBORAH CAMERON, Professor of Language and Communication, Worcester College, University of Oxford ''Green comprehensively disproves that slang is inherently masculine. Mumsnetters and bulldaggers, flappers and slappers, shicksters and hash-slingers all put in their claims as slang-users in their own right in this entertaining and thought-provoking book. Any writer venturing into the contentious area of women as users, creators or objects of slang from now on will look to Green for guidance or for arguments.'' JULIE COLEMAN, author of The Life of Slang Slang. The ultimate in man-made languages. The male gaze made verbal. A world where words for intercourse mean ''man hits woman'', the penis is a gun, a knife or club and the vagina a terrifying tunnel. Possibly with teeth. Two thousand words for woman and every one a put-down. Even ''mother'' is simply short for the grossest of obscenities. Thus the story, now and for several hundred years. But stories are just that and perhaps there''s an alternative. In this book Jonathon Green, the leading collector of English-language slang and drawing on forty years of research in the field, asks whether women have another role to play. As slang''s active, positive, rebellious subject, rather than its endlessly derided, submissive object. Sounds & Furies represents a quest to overturn a long-established, but far from invulnerable belief system. To show that throughout a recorded history that starts with Chaucer''s bawdy, mouthy and magnificently self-willed Wife of Bath and carries on through a cast of working girls and villainesses, playwrights and bestselling authors, shop-girls and fish-wives and through to the modern, on-line worlds of Mumsnet and Tinder, women have always made slang their own. If slang has always been the language of the margins, then women, for all their numbers, have also been consigned to the margins. Those days, it is ever more clear, are over. If slang has a role then it is to represent us at our most human. That may not mean ''admirable'' but it surely means ''true''. And humanity is on offer to everyone, whatever gender they may claim. That goes for language, whatever its variety, too. From the foreword by sex historian Kate Lister: ''Patriarchal cultures have understood women, controlled women, and marginalised women. But, this book also reveals that it is the rebellious women who used slang: the fishwives, the scolds, the whores, and the harridans. Long may they continue to do so.''

"Dirt" cleans up! Jonathon Green''s previous compilation, The Big Book of Filth, sold more than 100,000 copies. Smuttier, ruder, and better than ever, with 5,000 richly humorous phrases. Drink and drugs, scatology, sex, insults, money: these are the main preoccupations of the delightfully dirty slang so colorfully defined and illustrated in this no-holds-barred follow-up to the bestselling "Big Book of Filth. Those with "politically correct" and delicate sensibilities can tune out; broad-minded readers will dig in to discover terms of affirmation, approbation, contempt, and dismissal, as well as oaths, acronyms, and abbreviations. No group is exempt in this equal-opportunity verbal abuser, from the criminal underworld to the upper classes, children to fat persons, and every ethnicity. Among the 100 titillating A-Z topics: Coitus Interruptus; Dazed and Confused; Doo-Doo (to be in deep); Frankly, My Dear, I Don''t Give a Damn; Harm, Trouble and Strife; Masturbation; and more.

Where might it be advisable to bend your steps if you experienced an urgent need to bury a quaker? What would be your state of mind - or rather the state of your body - if someone described you as after your greens? How often does the average woman enjoy the pleasure of a visit from the cardinal? Under what circumstances would it be advisable to get out at Liverpool Edge Hill, rather than continuing all the way to Liverpool Lime Street? What is the exact nature of the complaint known as ''Irish toothache'', and why is a hot poultice - or, failing that, a consultation with the eminent physician Dr Jerkoff - generally considered to be the only reliable cure? How old is the ''F'' word and where does it come from? And has it always been verboten in polite society? Getting Off at Gateshead provides the answers to these, and to hundreds of other intriguing questions about words and phrases that are generally best avoided in job interviews, vicarage tea-parties, or when meeting your mother-in-law. The UK''s leading slang expert Jonathon Green here provides the unexpurgated low-down on the downest and dirtiest expressions in the English language, some of them current, some of them obsolete - all of them utterly filthy, relating as they do to every conceivable human bodily function, whether sexual, masturbatory, menstrual, defecatory or emetic. Getting out at Gateshead not only tells the intriguing but little-known stories behind some familiar profanities - from the ''F'' word to the ''C'' word - it also offers a cornu-copia of less familiar terms that readers will be itching to regale their friends with. A richly entertaining exploration of the endlessly inventive world of English slang, Getting Off at Gateshead is a must for every word buff''s 2008 Christmas stocking.

Thousands of wryly amusing quotations on every conceivable aspect of life, arranged thematicallyTopics covered range from acting to writing, from happiness to poverty, and from civilisation to sexRepresents the biting wit and world-weary wisdom of cynics from all walks of life and all periods of history, including Aesop, Simone de Beauvoir, Noel Coward, Bette Davis, Albert Einstein and Frederick the Great to name but a fewFull author index

The US edition of Neologisms published in 1991 by Bloomsbury (London). A collection of new words and phrases that have entered the English language since 1960--with definitions and, frequently, quotations illustrating use. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

How do you cost a menu? What happens if everyone orders the sea bass? What happens if no one orders the sea bass? How do you deal with a complaint about food poisoning? How indeed can five people in a small hot kitchen produce great food for hundreds of people at twenty minutes'' notice? Leading chef Andrew Parkinson answers all the questions we have ever pondered, and reveals in telling detail each bit of the everyday magic involved in running a successful restaurant.

Takes popular standard English terms and traces the development of their slang equivalents over the past 500 years

A collection of this often reviled but endlessly fascinating area of the English language, these volumes cover slang from the past five centuries right up to the present day, from all the different English-speaking countries and regions.

A collection of this often reviled but endlessly fascinating area of the English language, these volumes cover slang from the past five centuries right up to the present day, from all the different English-speaking countries and regions.