Books by Eric Partridge

For ANYONE WHO IMAGINES THEMSELVES FLYING A SPITFIRE.Drop your visiting cards, put aside your beer-lever, stop being a half-pint hero and discover the gloriously funny slang which was part of everyday life in two world wars.Passion-killers: Airwomen''s service knickers, whether twilights (the lighter, summer-weight variety) or black-outs (the navy-blue winter-weights). A wise directive has purposely made them as unromantic in colour and in design as a wise directive could imagine.Thanks to the work of Eric Partridge in 1945, the hilarious slang of the Royal Air Force during the first two World Wars has been preserved for generations to come. While some phrases like ''chocks away!'' have lasted to this day, others deserve to be rediscovered...Beer-lever: From pub-bars, meaning the ''Joystick'' of an aircraft. Canteen cowboy: A ladies'' man.Half-pint hero: A boaster. One who exemplifies the virtue of Dutch courage without having the trouble of going into action.Tin fish: A torpedo.Umbrella man: A parachutist.Visiting-card: A bomb.Wheels down: Get ready - especially to leave a bus, tram, train. From lowering the wheels, preparatory to landing.Whistled: In a state of intoxication wherein one tends to whistle cheerfully and perhaps discordantly.The Dictionary of RAF Slang is a funny and fascinating insight into the lives of our RAF heroes, in a time gone by.

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

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.

Describes 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. This book includes lists of prefixes, suffixes, and elements used in the creation of new vocabulary.

Usage and Abusage takes a long, hard look at the use - and constant misuse - of English. Declaring war on bad grammar, woolliness of expression and poor choice of vocabulary, this essential guide sets out both to highlight problems and pitfalls and to offer constructive advice on the proper use of English.

Here Partridge combined a detailed knowledge of Shakespeare and Elizabethan slang/innuendo to create 'a literary and psychological essay and a comprehensive glossary' of this long-avoided aspect of Shakespeare criticism.

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.