Take My Word for It: A Dictionary of English Idioms [Paperback]

Three centuries of English idioms—their unusual origins and unexpected interpretations

To pay through the nose. Raining cats and dogs. By hook or by crook. Curry favor. Drink like a fish. Eat crow.We hear such phrases every day, but this book is the first truly all-encompassing etymological guide to both their meanings and origins. Spanning more than three centuries,Take My Word for Itis a fascinating, one-of-a-kind window into the surprisingly short history of idioms in English. Widely known for his studies of word origins, Anatoly Liberman explains more than one thousand idioms, both popular and obscure, occurring in both American and British standard English and including many regional expressions.

The origins, and even the precise meaning, of most idioms are often obscure and lost in history. Based on a critical analysis of countless conjectures, with exact, in-depth references (rare in the literature on the subject),Take My Word for Itprovides not only a large corpus of idiomatic phrases but also a vast bibliography. Detailed indexes and a thesaurus make the content accessible at a glance, and Liberman’s introduction and conclusion add historical dimensions. The result of decades of research by a leading authority, this book is both instructive and absorbing for scholars and general readers, who won’t find another resource as comparable in scope or based on data even remotely as exhaustive.

Anatoly Liberman is professor of Germanic philology at the University of Minnesota. He has written more than twenty books, includingA Bibliography of English EtymologyandAn Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology(both from Minnesota).

Contents

Preface: Idioms in Our Life 

A Historian’s View: Idioms as a Late Dessert 

Sources and Abbreviations

The Idioms, A to Z

Indexes

Word Index

Name Index

Theme Index

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