A lively, evocative, authoritative dictionary of words from the world community of flight, this book expresses the machismo, the terror, the care for technical excellence, struggles over the power of naming between PR for manufacturers and others, reporters, flight crews, ramp rats, PAX, cabin attendants. The exhilaration of a "blue on blue" flying day, the horror of a "ground loop" that goes bad, or a "torque stall." Pilots, at the center, are extreme individualists in an activity that depends on teamwork - mechanics, weather forecasters, air traffic controllers, computer experts, schedulers and trackers, dispatchers, ground crew. The stress produces variations in speaking that range from technical words to vivid slang exclamations (see "Jesus nut").

Sources include people from all the levels listed above, some aviation and space writers, Gulf War veterans, and required on-site research at air shows in Le Bourget, Farnsborough, Berlin, Ottawa, Abbotsford, and in Dayton, Pensacola (FL), CFB St. Hubert (Qc.), Dallas-Fort Worth, Renton (WA), Wichita (KS), Montreal, and at such WWII bases as Elvington, near York, England.

The section on the names of aircraft includes both official names and the folk names given by those who actually had to fly or ride in them.

""I am amazed at how you have covered up all the profanity and kept such a clean book. You have made this] look like a respectable language ""

Bill Robinson, Public Relations

Collected from the talk of the people who live along Nova Scotia's South Shore, from Halifax to Yarmouth on the Atlantic shore, this book is a lively guide to the unusual way they speak. It is both very old, including words and phrases spoken but not written down since before Chaucer, and in a lively way, new and elaborate, like the original, complete version of "happy as a clam." It provides a guide to the life and character of these resilient fisher and farm folk. The work is illustrated with old photographs from the region, and it includes scholarly appendices on "Elizabethan English on Nova Scotia's South Shore" and "Rough Measure in Maritime Dialect Research," the latter written with Jacqueline Baum. The language will bring back vivid memories to those who have visited this scenic Maritime place and attract those who have not, to do so. As the record of a limited speech community, it may help students of English as a Second Language. It has been used by novelists, playwrights, and poets (including Robert MacNeil of the MacNeil/Lehrer Newshour, Canada's prolific dramatist Paul LeDoux, and George Elliott Clarke, a much-honored black Canadian poet), to give authentic flavor to their works. It will bring joy and insight to all who love language.