Buffy guide to slayer slang

The cult series Buffy The Vampire Slayer has drawn millions of viewers into a dark and deadly world of make-believe, where demons stalk the Earth with only a blonde teenager to stop them.

As a demon-killing, wisecracking icon of girl power, Buffy Summers, played by Sarah Michelle Gellar, not only possesses supernatural fighting skills but also a slang vocabulary all her own.

So if Buffy is heard to exclaim "That 007 is dollsome. I'd like to go to Dateville with him", what she means is: "That charming and well-dressed Englishman is very attractive. I would enjoy a romantic liaison with him."

Now the colourful wordplay has been collected in a new dictionary written by a leading American linguist, Professor Michael Adams, and published by Oxford University Press today.

The first series of Buffy aired in 1997, a spin-off from a 1995 B-list movie that starred Hilary Swank.

The show quickly became a huge hit, inspiring more than 1,200 websites and propelling Gellar to international fame. At its height, in 2001, the show's combination of virtuous lesbian witches, conscience-haunted vampires, demonic high-school principals and charismatic English librarians drew more than seven million viewers.

The final series is being screened in the UK by Sky One and will be shown on BBC2 later in the year. Part one of the final series is released on video by Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment this week.

What it all means

Single-entendre: stating the obvious, as in "that is so single-entendre".

Pre-posy: the early stage of a relationship.

Dawson's Creek: cheesy, from the TV series featuring a gang of clean-living young Americans.

Teutonic: man who holds traditional views about women, as in "he's so Teutonic, he expects me to do all the cooking".

Mr I Loved The English Patient: man who is sensitive or thoughtful, from the 1992 book by Michael Ondaatje, later filmed by Anthony Minghella.

Sabrina: witch, from children's TV show Sabrina The Teenage Witch, as in "my mother-in-law is such a Sabrina".