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The Big Book of Filth by Jonathon Green
Reviewed by TammyJo Eckhart
The Big Book of Filth by Jonathon Green is an ironically-named book, because it only measures 6.5” by 4.75”! It’s also a very British book, with the bulk of terms coming from English culture. But even though it’s small, it does pack a good deal of words and a fair number of illustrations between its hard covers.
The contents of The Big Book of Filth are sets of lists of English words divided into eleven categories/chapters, including gender, number of people involved in sex, and types of sexual interactions. As I find common in this type of dictionary, the words related to male parts and activities far outnumber their sister sections. For example, masturbation has 23 pages for men and only 2 pages for women.
Words give a time period for their popularity, along with information about which English-speaking culture they originated or are used in. The default is British English, but there are terms from almost every continent too. Sometimes there is a note about subcultures that may use the term, such as teens. 63 black-and-white line drawings also pop up in the book, always at the beginning of each chapter; I think the goal of the illustrations is to be amusing, not arousing.
Words are also inset into special category charts throughout the book. Some of these are the rhyming charts that the introduction makes a point of discussing. Oddly, after all that, only 15 rhyming charts are found throughout the book, compared to 50 other charts that list words by subcategories such as “proper names.”
At nine dollars you may ask, “Is this worth my money?” I can’t say that this is a book that the average reader will find entertaining, but it can be fun to read along with your friends. Also it might be of interest to those of us who would like to find new ways of saying the same old thing; just be careful the person you say these words to knows what you are talking about. |
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