The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms

If english is your second language it will be usefull for you to have it .it also use most of idioms in sentence as a sample, cool

I rarely use this dictionary because I also own Cassell's Dictionary of Slang by Jonathon Green, which is decidedly superior. This Dictionary of Idioms at first seems a more scholarly approach to the subject, but soon falls short of expectations as its selection of words is relatively small and mostly consists of the most well known slang. For more unusual words, I have always had to refer elsewhere.

Really a wonderful reference. It goes to study with me every day now. Very clearly written and descriptive definitions including very good idiom history data.

Some examples - I found more unexpected data on the idiom "by and large" here than in the biggest bulkiest dictionary in the courseroom. Also the idiomatic definition of "washed-out" was the best I've ever read. "Dead as a doornail" was another good one.

This book is now indispensable to me. Bravo to the author!

ARC,

Simon

This is probably a great book for people learning English as a second language. But if English is your first language, it's very doubtful that you need it. I don't consider myself very knowledgeable about idioms, yet I could scarcely find more than a few that I didn't already know the meaning of. To an average American, 90 percent of this is useless. One thing I did learn was what "chickens come home to roost" means -- but that's surely not enough knowledge to justify the price of the book.

If you're looking for the ideal resource for idioms, this is it! Highly recommend!