The English language contains a vast store of idioms that can be used in creative and forceful ways. This totally revised and greatly expanded edition of Dictionary of Idioms examines over 500 such phrases, tracing each one's source and history through a rich supply of examples. New entries include 'playing fast and loose' (from a 16th-century fairground game), 'head over heels' (a totally illogical variation on the more sensible 'heels over head') and 'knee-high to a grasshopper' (which won out over knee-high to a mosquito and knee-high to a toad). Mini-essays scattered through the book enable the authors to expand on such broader themes as: What is an Idiom?, National Rivalries, and the Old Curiosity Shop of Linguistics. While maintaining scholarly accuracy, Linda and Roger Flavell convey their great love of the curious in language in a way that will be irresistible to anyone who delights in words.
Segnalato da Alice Gerratana

An honest square meal but it doesn't fill you up. This dictionary by Linda and Roger Flavell compiles a whole bunch of idioms commonly used in the English language and briefly explains the etymology behind them. It then provides real-world examples of their use. As a quick reference work, it should prove about adequate.

However, it is by no means comprehensive: at a little over 200 pages, there's plenty of idioms not covered. In fact, the very nature of the book encourages you to think about the stock phrases you use everyday and, off the top of my head, today alone I've used 'catch-22', 'knows his onions', 'rod for his own back' and 'sober as a judge'. None of these can be found in the Flavells' book. ('Off the top of my head' – there's another one.) This diminishes its value as a reference work, whilst in compiling only commonly-used idioms the book didn't fulfil my hope of unearthing some obscure gems.

One peculiarity of the book which deserves mention concerns the examples chosen by the Flavells to illustrate the idioms chosen. Rather than quoting extensively from literature or historical figures, most of the real-world examples come from then-contemporary newspapers and periodicals (in 1991-2). Consequently, through exposure to mundane passages from the Mid-Sussex Times, Woman's Own, Good Housekeeping, Which?, the TV guide (for Chrissake) and, peculiarly, some Princess Diana biographies, we learn as much about the authors' middle-class, late-middle-aged, English reading habits as we do about idioms. Not only does this give off the slight whiff that the book was at least partially compiled in a dentist's waiting room, but it diminishes the value of the book further by missing out on the opportunity to provide us with some choice literary quotes. Fittingly given the authors' choice of reading material, the best way to describe the Flavells' Dictionary of Idioms and Their Origins is as a Reader's Digest approach to the topic at hand. ( )