Whether you are describing a posh totty or a down and out tramp, Modern Slang feeds you a smorgasbord of juicy bang on trend jargon.Īnd when you get to create a villain and write his or her dialogue you have a multitude of sins to make their dialogue bounce of the page and into the hearts and minds of your readers. Depending on who the character is that is referring to the child they could be a sprog, a sprout, a rug-rat or a squirt. Same with people status, a child wouldn’t be simply a child. Take a look at People and Society, here you have a wide choice of words to describe folks from different nations, and depending on the character you may want a bad ass to say something derogatory or lightly refer to their ethnic group.
If you had to kill off a character for whatever reason why would they be ‘dead’ when they could be ‘pushing up daisies’? People Power Your teens or young guns wouldn’t say ‘this room stinks’ more likely they would grunt out a ‘this joint is minging’. Why give another character ‘big eyes’ when they can have ‘lamps’ … or they may have ‘peepers’ for that matter. For example, when describing your suspect … let’s call him Mike … why write ‘Mike was bald’ when you could scribe ‘a slaphead in a three piece suit’. Slaphead is in – especially if you want him to be a ruffian or dodgy character.
Character Labelsĭon’t give a boring account of a man with no hair. If dinner, partners, kids and life in general didn’t get in the way, an aspiring writer, and indeed any well-tuned author, could get lost in this book only to reappear when they’ve chewed through every word. When Modern Slang arrived it should have duly been stacked at the bottom of my review pile, but something about the cover (maybe the wedge of cheese) made me flick through it before jamming it under at least 17 others.Īnd before I knew it, I was in writers’ wonderland!Īt first flicking through and then avidly fixated with each page. As a mouse is electronically wired to a laptop so too will this dictionary become an intravenous drip to a writer. There’s no end to the ‘mind-blowing’ power of Modern Slang. The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang by John Ayto and John Simpson.
#Modern dictionary of slang full#
We love this book - read our full review on Modern Slang. Have a good nose through the thematic section, it’s like bottled inspiration! Not only can you find modern ways with dialogue, but you can create sparkling ‘labels’ for your characters.
read on!Īt first flicking through and then avidly fixated with each page. Drawing on the unique resources of the Oxford English Dictionary and offering coverage of over 6,000 slang words and expressions from the Cockney 'abaht' to the American term 'zowie', this is the most lively and authoritative dictionary of slang from the 20th and 21st centuries.
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