In the library, I did a side-by-side comparison of this book (Chapman: Dictionary of American Slang, 3rd ed., 1995) with: (a) Spears, Richard: NTC's Dictionary of American Slang and Colloquial Expressions, 3rd ed., 2000 and (b) Green, Jonathon: Cassell Dictionary of Slang, 1998. The advantages of this dictionary over the other two are: (1) some words and phrases are in this book but not the other two (e.g., "love bug," "love me, love my dog"); (2) it gives specific quotations and sources (e.g., "Had Feldstein deliberately low-balled the original numbers? - Newsweek"); (3) it indicates what sort of people originated or might use the word/phrase (e.g. "lot louse... [used in the] circus"); and (4) thorough cross-references are integrated into the body of the dictionary (e.g., "love, see CALF LOVE, FOR THE LOVE OF PETE, PUPPY LOVE"). It has 617 pages and claims to have 19,000 entries, which is between the other two books. On the other hand, the Cassell Dictionary contains a large percentage of the entries in this book as well as many more entries, and it's the oldest of the three dictionaries. Still, if you had to buy only one of the three, this is probably the one to get.
