Scraping the Barrel


Book Description




Scraping the Barrel:The Military Use of Sub-Standard Manpower


Book Description

From the dawn of organized conflict, sub-standard men--the inverse of the elites that get the lion's share of our attention-- have served their countries. This is their untold history.




Advanced Everyday English


Book Description

"Advanced Everyday English is designed in very much the same mode as the first book (Practical Everyday English with audio CD) in that all of the examples will contain vocabulary and expressions you have studied on earlier pages. You will also find many words from the first book, which will give you an opportunity to revise the material. In this second book there is more of what one might call "serious" vocabulary, but there are plenty of phrasal verbs and idioms as well. The book will be of particular benefit to those readers with an advanced level of English who wish to become (or who already are) interpreters, translators or teachers of English, or who simply want to be able to speak and understand English at a very high level. In addition, people who need to read English language journals or converse in English on a daily basis, either in business or for pleasure, will find it very useful."--Publisher's description.




The Role of Dictionary Use in the Comprehension of Idiom Variants


Book Description

The book takes up the subject of dictionary use from the perspective of advanced learners. The study aims to explore the effects of the use of a monolingual learner’s dictionary on students’ performance in a complex comprehension task, i.e. the task of interpreting fragments with modified idioms, which often disrupt the fluent reading process. The theoretical part summarises the results of lexicographic research in the field of receptive dictionary use and discusses its methodological aspects. Moreover, it introduces relevant elements of the reading theory and analyses the nature of idiomatic expressions, their transformations in particular, from a psycholinguistic point of view. Finally, problems connected with the presentation of idioms in monolingual learner’s dictionaries are highlighted. The major, empirical part reports on an experiment, whose aim was to find connections between the consultation process, the way of presenting lexicographic information on idioms, and comprehension scores. The results reveal a mildly positive influence of the monolingual learner’s dictionary on reading comprehension performance. Among the reasons for underachievement were misinterpretation of entries and insufficient processing of dictionary information in context.







The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English


Book Description

Booklist Top of the List Reference Source The heir and successor to Eric Partridge's brilliant magnum opus, The Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, this two-volume New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is the definitive record of post WWII slang. Containing over 60,000 entries, this new edition of the authoritative work on slang details the slang and unconventional English of the English-speaking world since 1945, and through the first decade of the new millennium, with the same thorough, intense, and lively scholarship that characterized Partridge's own work. Unique, exciting and, at times, hilariously shocking, key features include: unprecedented coverage of World English, with equal prominence given to American and British English slang, and entries included from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, India, South Africa, Ireland, and the Caribbean emphasis on post-World War II slang and unconventional English published sources given for each entry, often including an early or significant example of the term’s use in print. hundreds of thousands of citations from popular literature, newspapers, magazines, movies, and songs illustrating usage of the headwords dating information for each headword in the tradition of Partridge, commentary on the term’s origins and meaning New to this edition: A new preface noting slang trends of the last five years Over 1,000 new entries from the US, UK and Australia New terms from the language of social networking Many entries now revised to include new dating, new citations from written sources and new glosses The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English is a spectacular resource infused with humour and learning – it’s rude, it’s delightful, and it’s a prize for anyone with a love of language.




English-Albanian Dictionary of Idioms


Book Description

This dictionary contains 6000 commonly used English idioms with their corresponding Albanian translation. Nearly 15,000 examples from specialised dictionaries, explanatory dictionaries, fiction and phrasebooks are used to illustrate the phrases.




Weekly News Letter


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Marshall's Law


Book Description

Ex-undercover cop Marshall Grade is hiding out in California when he learns that federal agent Lucas Cohen has survived a kidnapping. Cohen was Marshall’s ticket into witness protection, and his captors have a simple question: where’s Marshall now? Marshall’s undercover work gave him a long list of enemies, and the enemy in this case is a corrupt businessman named Dexter Vine. Vine’s almost broke, in debt to people even worse than himself, and he wants to settle old scores while he has time. He’s hired Ludo Coltrane—a nonchalant psychopath and part-time bar manager—to find Marshall at any cost. Ludo’s no stranger to killing, but his associate, the cash-strapped ex-con Perry Rhodes, may prove more of a liability than an asset. The question to be answered in Marshall's Law is: what has Marshall done to make Dexter want him dead? And are the contacts from his old life—ex-colleague Lana, and the heroin dealer Henry Lee—prepared to help him, or will they just sell him out? In the thrilling, action-packed Marshall Grade novels by Ben Sanders, an ex-undercover NYPD officer in witness protection is on the run from the criminals he ratted out. But Marshall can’t remain in hiding when people’s lives are at stake and he can do something about it–even if it means putting himself in the crosshairs of every contract killer hired to settle old scores. “For lovers of Jack Reacher and Jason Bourne there is a new gun in town–a noble loner called Marshall Grade.” —Michael Robotham, bestselling author of Suspect (on American Blood)