Eric Partridge: 19 books

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.

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...

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.

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.

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...

From abdabs to zit From pillock (14th century) to couch potato (20th century) From She'll be apples (Australia) to the pits (USA) This new collection brings together some 5,000 contemporary slang expressions originating in all parts of the English-speaking world. It gives clear and concise...

First published in 1939, this book provides a brief but comprehensive view of language in general, and of English and American language in particular. It is suitable for beginners and those who wish to learn about the basics of linguistics.

First published in 1949 (this edition in 1968), this book is a dictionary of the past, exploring the language of the criminal and near-criminal worlds. It includes entries from Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, as well as from Britain and America and offers a fascinating and unique...

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

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...

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 standard work on punctuation has long been judged the foremost study of the subject. It reveals punctuation to be both an indispensable craft and an invaluable art - a friend, not an enemy.

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...

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...