American Idioms in Historical Perspective

11,500 Colorful Phrases from Boomers to Woke

American Idioms in Historical Perspective is a time capsule of 2025 that registers the most popular phrases and buzzwords used by the last four generations. It also reflects the culture war among the prevailing political philosophies. The woke terms dealing with gender, race, social justice and political correctness are objectively defined and illustrated with examples. The book is rich in euphemisms, metaphors, catchphrases and slang terms shared by the baby boomers, their children and grandchildren. The reader will find the definition of words and phrases like snowflakes, Oppression Olympics, toxic masculinity, and gender affirming care. There are many references to the origin and the first recorded date of 11,500 words and phrases.
George L. Nagy is a Professor Emeritus of Hudson Valley Community College (part of the State University of New York in Troy, NY), where he taught German, Russian, Economics, and English for 40 years. He has been publishing monolingual and bilingual phraseological dictionaries for 30 years. His 1250-page Thesaurus of English Idioms (2006) is the first major dictionary of synonymous idioms in the English language. His work was recognized by Akadémiai Kiadó (Budapest) with the "Best Dictionary of the Year Award" (2005) for his English-Hungarian and Hungarian-English Dictionary of Idioms, and by TINTA Publishing House (Budapest) with the "Golden Pen Award" (2018) for publishing several successful dictionaries.