Slayer Slang: A Buffy the Vampire Slayer Lexicon

By Michael Adams

Book Overview

In its seven years on television, Buffy the Vampire Slayer has earned critical acclaim and a massive cult following among teen viewers. One of the most distinguishing features of the program is the innovative way the show's writers play with language: fabricating new words, morphing existing ones, and throwing usage on its head. The result has been a strikingly resonant lexicon that reflects the power of both youth culture and television in the evolution of American slang. Using the show to illustrate how new slang is formed, transformed, and transmitted, Slayer Slang is one of those rare books that combines a serious explanation of a pop culture phenomena with an engrossing read for fans of the show, word geeks, and language professionals. Michael Adams begins his book with a synopsis of the program's history and a defense of ephemeral language. He then moves to the main body of the work: a detailed glossary of slayer slang, annotated with actual dialogue and recorded the style accepted by the American Dialect Society. The book concludes with a bibliography and a lengthy index, a guide to sources (novels based on the show, magazine articles about the show, and language culled from the official posting board) and an appendix of slang-making suffixes. Introduced by Jane Espenson, one of the show's most inventive writers (and herself a linguist), Slayer Slang offers a quintessential example of contemporary youth culture serving as a vehicle for slang.
In the tradition of The Physics of Star Trek, Slayer Slang is one of those rare books that offers a serious examination a TV cult phenomenon appealing to fans and thinkers alike.
A few examples from the Slayer Slang glossary:
bitca n AHD4 bitch n in sense 2.a ] a] Bitch 1997 Sep 15 Whedon When She Was Bad " Willow: ] 'I mean, why else would she be acting like such a b-i-t-c-h?' Giles: ] 'Willow, I think we're all a little old to be spelling things out.' Xander: ] 'A bitca?'"
break and enterish adj AHD4 sv breaking and entering n ] -ish suff in sense 2.a] Suitable for crime 1999 Mar 16 Petrie Enemies "I'll go home and stock up on weapons, slip into something a little more break and enterish." B]
carbon-dated adj fr. AHD4 carbondating ] -ed] Very out of date 1997 Mar 10 Whedon Welcome to the Hellmouth " Buffy: ] 'Deal with that outfit for a moment.' Giles: ] 'It's dated?' Buffy: ] 'It's carbon-dated.'"
cuddle-monkey n AHD4 cuddle v ] monkey n in sense 2, by analogy fr. RHHDAS (also DAS3 and NTC) sv cuddle bunny 'an affectionate, passionate, or sexually attractive young woman'] Male lover 1998 Feb 10 Noxon Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered "Every woman in Sunnydale wants to make me her cuddle-monkey." X]

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195160339
• ISBN13: 9780195160338
• Release Date: July 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
• Length: 320 Pages
• Weight: 1.43 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.0" x 9.6" x 6.4"

Customer Reviews

Uber-awesome

I love how the characters on Buffy speak. So distinctive and so funny and so clever. And now here's a book all about their use of language and "Slayer Slang!!!!" Sometimes I wish Buffy weren't so successful on TV, because other shows have tried to imitate this way of speaking and the results have been awful. Exhibit #1: Charmed. But as for Buffy, it's all good, and this book is great reading for fans, because the way that Buffy and her Scooby friends talk is a critical appeal of the show. I highly recommend this if you like the Buffyverse.

nice reference

I enjoy the banter on BTVS, and I'm glad that someone thought to create an entire book full of character quotes. The book also has it's own history of vampyr and gives more background information about characters in case an episode was missed. A good book for any BTVS fan.

Slayer slang is simply academic after this book

If the question is posed as to whether "Slayer Slang: A `Buffy the Vampire Slayer' Lexicon" by Michael Adams will introduce more fans of the late lamented cult television series to the study of philology or send more philologists to check out the series on DVD and/or in syndication, then I would have to cast my vote for the first option. Hopefully, fans will recognize that their enjoyment of slang on "BtVS" has always entailed an appreciation of the presentation and analysis of the peculiar use of language on the various episodes and related paperback novels, all of which are now rendered as "texts" in this academic endeavor by Adams. The first half of the volume presents what are essentially a series of essays. "Slayer Slang" looks at both the series as a phenomenon and the role that both slayer jargon (words peculiar to the occupation of being a slayer) and slayer slang (the pointed way in which Buffy and the Scoobies speak, with all their attendant pop culture references) in establishing the show's successful slayer style. If you can follow how slayer jargon can turn into slayer slang, then you are holding your own on the academic side of the equation. But the success here is in the details, and when Adams explains how Faith's idiosyncratic slang differs from Xander and the others most readers should be able to appreciate the analysis. "Making Slayer Slang" covers the attraction of prefixes and the happy endings provided by using suffixes, with Adams become absolutely wistful as he covers the impressive number of words contributed to the lexicon by using "-age" as a hyperactive suffix. I have to admit, I probably learned more about the parts of language from Adams's analysis of shifty slang, what with nouns becoming adjectives and such, than I learned in school (I picked up the rules of grammar by osmosis, i.e., what is known in some circles as reading). But when he covers the mixed etymologies in slayer slang and deals with the mind boggling problem presented by "Edge Girl" in terms of being the product of so many current sense of "girl," he is clearly reaching the limits of endurance for most readers."Studying the Micro-histories of Words" starts off looking at what has been going on in popular culture in the real world to create such things as actuation, before going off into a wonderful look at all the baggage in American English carried by the name "Buffy." Once again Adams launches into some philological pyrotechnics on lexical gaps, loose idioms, and folk etymologies before quickly ending this chapter as well. The final essay, "Ephemeral Language," is where Adams will leave most "BtVS" fans in the dust as he looks at the significance of slayer slang in larger terms, namely what it tells us about the current state of the English language. The second half of the volume consists of a glossary, albeit one edited down from the massive collection of words and derived forms of words Adams originally compiled by October 2002. Still

I'm a Buffyatric!

I'm a big fan of the show (I guess that means I'm a Buffyholic) and this book sums up why. The writers are so playful with language, and by incoporating youth culture slang and morphing it into Buffyspeak they bring an authenticity to the show. A sense of the real. And that's saying something for a show about vampires. I love how serious the glossary is too. Makes me want to become a professor of Buffy studies. I love this dictionary. It's so much fun!

Wacky Words and Lovely Linguistics!

I am not a huge Buffy fan (I've just seen the last couple of seasons) but I got this as a present and it's GREAT. You really get a feel for how English is changing and how tv shows like Buffy are pushing the boundaries of our language.There's a lot of information here but it's not hard to read. I read a lot of it straight through. I thought I was pretty strict about "correct grammar" but this guy makes some really good points about how language changes. He really won me over. The words from the show are so funny! I'm going to use a lot of them, especially "much," like "lame much?" or "late much?" I recommend this for anyone who likes Buffy, or for anyone who just likes words.