Kate Burridge is Professor of Linguistics at Monash University. She is well known for her broadcasts on ABC Radio's Soundback.

'… for those who failed to brush up their grammar, hope is at hand from a new book that celebrates slang and poor punctuation.' The Independent

• 1. Introduction to the weedy traits of the English language; 2. Lexical weeds: the world of jargon, slang and euphemism; 3. More lexical weeds: word origins and meaning shifts; 4. Our grammatical weeds; 5. Weeds in our sounds and spelling; 6. The truly nasty weeds of the English language?; 7. W(h)ither our weeds?

Kate Burridge is Professor of Linguistics at Monash University. She is well known for her broadcasts on ABC Radio's Soundback.

'… for those who failed to brush up their grammar, hope is at hand from a new book that celebrates slang and poor punctuation.' The Independent

• 1. Introduction to the weedy traits of the English language; 2. Lexical weeds: the world of jargon, slang and euphemism; 3. More lexical weeds: word origins and meaning shifts; 4. Our grammatical weeds; 5. Weeds in our sounds and spelling; 6. The truly nasty weeds of the English language?; 7. W(h)ither our weeds?