Shape up your English with thousands of idioms.

Whether you are a learner of English who is having difficulty understanding expressions in everyday speech or a native speaker who wants to expand your written or spoken range, you need a comprehensive reference for idioms, common phrases, and sayings of American English. "McGraw-Hill's American Idioms Dictionary" shows you the ropes of English and helps you: . . Expand your English-speaking abilities with these 14,000-plus expressions, proverbs, and common sayings, listed alphabetically . Use American idioms correctly by following the many helpful examples . Easily find the right phrase by one of its key words . . .

Some examples of the colorful English language, as spoken by Americans: .

at peace relaxed and happy
. every trick in the book every deceptive method known
. Johnny-on-the-spot someone who is in the right place at the right time
. make a killing to have a great success, especially in making money
. nine-to-five job a job with normal daytime hours
. scream bloody murder to complain bitterly
. take a powder to leave; to leave town

Volume I of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), published to wide acclaim in 1985, captured the wondrous variety and creativeness of American folk words and expressions and tickled the imagination of lovers of language around the world. Decades in preparation, the DARE corpus reflects the liveliness of English as it is spoken on America's main streets and country roads-the regional metaphors and similes passed along within homes and communities. Like its popular predecessor, Volume II is a treasury of vernacular Americanisms. In Virginia a goldfinch is a dandelion bird, in Missouri an insufficient rain shower a drizzle-fizzle. Gate was Louis Armstrong's favorite sender (a verbal spur to a sidekick in a band), a usage that probably originated from the fact that gates swing. Readers will bedazzled by the wealth of entries-more than 11,000-contained in this second volume alone. The two and a half pages on "dirt" reveal that a small marble is a dirt pea in the South. To eat dried apples, a curious rural euphemism for becoming pregnant, appears in the five pages on "eat." Seven pages on "horn" and related words take readers on a tour of the animal and nether worlds: horned lark, horned frog, horned pout (look that one up), and that horned fellow, the devil. Initiated under the leadership of Frederic G. Cassidy, DARE represents an unprecedented attempt to document the living language of the entire country. The project's primary tool was a carefully worded survey of 1,847 questions touching on most aspects of everyday life and human experience. Over a five-year period fieldworkers interviewed natives of 1,002 communities, a patchwork of the United States in all its diversity. The result is a database of more than two and a half million items-a monument to the richness of American folk speech. Additionally, some 7,000 publications, including novels, diaries, and small-town newspapers, have yielded a bountiful harvest of local idioms. Computer-generated maps accompanying many of the entries illustrate the regional distribution of words and phrases. The entries contained in Volume II-from the poetic and humorous to the witty and downright bawdy-will delight and inform readers.

With this fun visual guide, simply follow the illustrated prompts and read the English words out loud with emphasis on the words in red: soon you'll be speaking French Learn to be polite by saying "please": "See Voo Play" (S'il vous plait). Or let someone know what a "good idea" that was: "Set Tune Bunny Day" (C'est une bonne idee).

The simple icons are easy to follow and this pocket-sized guide is easy to carry with you. It will give you the basic phrases you need to get around while traveling, whether asking directions, ordering food at a restaurant, or shopping. But most of all, it's just plain fun

Mike Ellis is a web designer who runs the popular website www.slanguage.com. He lives with his family in Philadelphia.

Learn simple French in a snap

What's ILL in one place can be WACK in another, or the same word can actually have TOTES different meanings. It's CRAY CRAY! From KEWL girls hitting on HENCH boys to wannabe gangstas hangin' with their DOGGS in the ENDZ, teen slang can leave NOOBS CONFUZZLED. If you want to appear DOPE or just want to know WTF is going on, How to Talk Teen is the ultimate guide! Bugly : Short for butt ugly; exceeded on the ugly ranking by dugly and fugly. Pfun: More than mere fun. This is pure fun. Rando: A random person who appears at parties but who no one seems to know, let alone invited. Hiberdating: Disappearing from view because you're spending almost all your time with your new boyfriend/girlfriend. Nodel: Someone who thinks they look like a model . . . but nobody else does. Rentsy: Acting like parents, i.e. acting responsibly or demonstrating a nauseating taste in music. Mis-wave: To wave back at someone you think is waving at you, but who was actually waving to someone else. Ugly radius: The distance from you that someone stops looking attractive. Hot mess: Someone attractive who looks cool and in control, but who's an emotional train wreck. Lipsin: Kissing energetically - but less aggressively than a full-on snog. Selfie claw: Your contorted hand as you simultaneously hold your phone and take the photo. Air Five: High-five greeting to someone from across a room. Endz: The street where you live or the immediate neighbourhood. Pit stick: Underarm antiperspirant/deodorant. Top bantz: Particularly insightful or mocking banter. Hashtag Douchebag: A moron who uses hashtags excessively in anything they type in an attempt to be witty

The Great Patriotic War (GPW) of the Soviet people against Nazi Germany, known in the West as the Eastern Front of WWII, continues to attract a number of military historians from different countries around the world. The frontline veterans' reminiscences occupy a prominent place among most important documents of that time. In contrast to official documents, these recollections reproduce the so-called truth of the foxholes, the genuine spirit of the war. Along with their honesty, the WWII veterans' reminiscences are full of idiomatic expressions, specialized terms and abbreviations peculiar to that war. Regardless of their language, the memoirs reproduce the wartime vocabulary of the authors' nationalities, and reading them can be a difficult task for uninformed readers. As a consequence, special dictionaries appeared in print and later on Internet web sites. Unlike most of the Allied countries, no war jargon/slang dictionary has been published in Russia. This glossary is intended to begin to fill that gap. Several sources of the Red Army serviceman's slang were peculiar to the Soviet experience. The upheaval of the 1917 October Revolution and following Civil War, and the fundamental changes wrought by the political and social reforms and campaigns in the 1920s-1930s affected the Russian vocabulary substantially. The fact that the overwhelming majority of Red Army soldiers and officers came from rural households, and brought their local idioms and expressions into the trenches, also enriched the war vocabulary. Every army has its traditions and slogans, many of which were revived in the Red Army during WWII. All of the aforementioned sources and others contributed to the Russian wartime vocabulary. The authors began this glossary as a translators' aid, but now they believe it will also be of interest to military historians and linguists who work with original Russian military sources, especially of the Second World War period.

Cekidot, gan!--"Check it out, Boss!" Kamu Dodol--"You're a coconut fudge!" (You're slow on the uptake) This book is an informal compendium of Indonesian expressions, including proverbs, slang, quotations and acronyms. The unique aspects of the Indonesian language offer one of the best windows into Indonesian culture. Slang, titles, proverbs, nicknames, acronyms, quotations and other expressions reveal its character, in the words of its people and are a great way to learn Indonesian culture. This book of expressions looks at Indonesia with the help of its national language, bahasa Indonesia. It describes Indonesians and their fears, beliefs, history and politics, as well as how they live, fight, grieve and laugh. Indonesian is a variant of Malay, the national language of Malaysia, and many of its expressions come from the Malay heartland of Sumatra island. Indonesian has also incorporated terms from Javanese, the language of the dominant ethnic group in a huge nation of more than 17,000 islands. Although Indonesian is officially a young language, it contains words from Sanskrit, Arabic, Chinese, Dutch, Portuguese and English, a legacy of the merchants, warriors, laborers and holy men who traveled to the archipelago over the centuries. The Indonesian language was a nationalist symbol during the campaign against Dutch rule in the 20th century. Indonesians who fought against colonialism made it the national language in their constitution when they declared independence in 1945. Two generations later, modern Indonesians loveword play. The tongue slips and skids, chopping words, piling on syllables and flipping them. Indonesians turn phrases into acronyms and construct double meanings. Their inventions reflect social trends, mock authority, or get the point across in a hurry. This book divides Indonesian expressions into categories such as food and wisdom, politics and personalities. The format is the same in each chapter. An expression in Indonesian, or sometimes a regional language in Indonesia, is followed by a translation, an interpretation of the meaning, and usually a summary of the idiom's origin or background. Some translations are more literal than others, reflecting an effort to balance clarity of meaning with the flavor of the original words.

Wherever you go in the English-speaking world, there are linguistic riches from times past awaiting rediscovery. All you have to do is choose a location, find some old documents, and dig a little. In The Disappearing Dictionary, linguistics expert Professor David Crystal collects together delightful dialect words that either provide an insight into an older way of life, or simply have an irresistible phonetic appeal. Like a mirror image of The Meaning of Liff that just happens to be true, The Disappearing Dictionary unearths some lovely old gems of the English language, dusts them down and makes them live again for a new generation. dabberlick [noun, Scotland] A mildly insulting way of talking about someone who is tall and skinny. 'Where's that dabberlick of a child?' fubsy [adjective, Lancashire] Plump, in a nice sort of way. squinch [noun, Devon] A narrow crack in a wall or a space between floorboards. 'I lost sixpence through a squinch in the floor'.

This book is the first full-length volume to offer a comprehensive introduction to the English spoken in Britain's oldest overseas colony, and, since 1949, Canada's youngest province. Within North America, Newfoundland and Labrador English is a highly distinctive speech variety. It is known for its generally conservative nature, having retained close ties with its primary linguistic roots, the traditional speech of southwestern England and southern Ireland. It is also characterised by a high degree of regional and social variation. Over the past half century, the region has experienced substantial social, economic and cultural change. This is reflected linguistically, as younger generations of Newfoundlanders and Labradorians increasingly align themselves with 'mainland' North American norms. The volume includes: *An accessible description of the phonological, grammatical, lexical and discourse features of this variety *Treatment of regional speech variation within the province, and its historical sources *Discussion of the social underpinnings of ongoing language change *Language samples from both traditional and contemporary speakers *A survey of published work on Newfoundland and Labrador English from earlier centuries to the present day.

Polari has been the secret language of gay men and women through the twentieth century. But more than a language, Polari is an attitude. From the prisons and music halls of Edwardian England to Kenneth Williams, American Gls in London and the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgence, Polari has been used to laugh, bitch, gossip and cruise. Like all slang, Polari users coined an ever-changing vocabulary. Derived from words used by criminals, circus artists, beggars and prostitutes, it also employed Italian, Yiddish, French, rhyming slang and backslang. Polari speakers camped up a storm, from West End chorus boys and office workers to East End sea-queens. Since gay liberation, lesbian and gay slang has become less a language of concealment than a language of specialization, though the tradition of camp remains. A carefully researched and entertaining read, Fantabulosa presents a lexicon of Polari and a more general dictionary of lesbian and gay slang. If you don't yet know what vada the bona cartes on the ommee ajax, parkering ninty, a Mexican nightmare or a nellyectomy mean, then this is the book for you.

Part of the Advanced Language Series, this is a revised edition of The Greek Dialects published by Chicago University Press in 1955. Its virtues were comparative clarity and conciseness on a subject too often treated, for example by contemporary work in German, with prolixity and obscurity. It became the standard scholarly introduction and reference work on questions of dialect; and though much valuable additional work has been done on the subject since its appearance, it largely retains its original virtues and still provides a valuable starting point of reference. The Advanced Language Series reissues important books on Greek and Latin Language (and associated areas) which have been unavailable for some time or have not previously appeared in readily affordable paperback format. They are intended for the reference shelves of all scholars and students of classical languages.

Late-nineteenth-century America was crazy about dialect: vernacular varieties of American English entertained mass audiences in "local color" stories, in realist novels, and in poems and plays. But dialect was also at the heart of anxious debates about the moral degeneration of urban life, the ethnic impact of foreign immigration, the black presence in white society, and the female influence on masculine authority. Celebrations of the rustic raciness in American vernacular were undercut by fears that dialect was a force of cultural dissolution with the power to contaminate the dominant language.
In this volume, Gavin Jones explores the aesthetic politics of this neglected "cult of the vernacular" in little-known regionalists such as George Washington Cable, in the canonical work of Mark Twain, Henry James, Herman Melville, and Stephen Crane, and in the ethnic writing of Abraham Cahan and Paul Laurence Dunbar. He reveals the origins of a trend that deepened in subsequent literature: the use of minority dialect to formulate a political response to racial oppression, and to enrich diverse depictions of a multicultural nation.

Orbs and the Attack of the Hair Spiders begins a fantastic journey full of magic, strange beasts, family and friendship. Brickabrack is a town terrified by strange disappearances and grisly murders. Could its salvation come from a chance encounter between the ancient forest gnome, Orbs and the banished Warlock, Blackmouth? The first in the series featuring the magical being, Orbs.

Are you considered a ""dingbatter,"" or outsider, when you visit the Outer Banks? Have you ever noticed a picture in your house hanging a little ""sigogglin,"" or crooked? Do you enjoy spending time with your ""buddyrow,"" or close friend? Drawing on over two decades of research and 3,000 recorded interviews from every corner of the state, Walt Wolfram and Jeffrey Reaser's lively book introduces readers to the unique regional, social, and ethnic dialects of North Carolina, as well as its major languages, including American Indian languages and Spanish. Considering how we speak as a reflection of our past and present, Wolfram and Reaser show how languages and dialects are a fascinating way to understand our state's rich and diverse cultural heritage. The book is enhanced by maps and illustrations and augmented by more than 100 audio and video recordings, which can be found online at talkintarheel.com.

This state-of-the-art volume features fourteen contributions by internationally renowned scholars covering three areas of contact linguistics: (1) Creolistics, beginning with an essay on the rise of the meaning and use of the word

Intermediate-Advanced Level.

This popular, pocket-size dictionary is ideal for students who need and quick and easy reference to American words and phrases. This handy new dictionary also has a hard-wearing plastic cover.

This book deals with bilingual education in general, but it pays special attention to bilingual education in monolingual areas. One central aim is to study the effects of bilingual programmes during the final stages of Primary and Secondary Education in contexts where the L2 (English) is not normally used as an instrument of social communication in the students' environment, but instead is used only at school, where some subject areas are undertaken totally or partially in this language. The reader interested in bilingual education will find a valuable source of information on different bilingual programmes in the USA and Spain: what schools do and the contents they teach, their timetable and extracurricular activities; the specific objectives that they aim to achieve and the methodology they use, with special reference to the CLIL approach, the schools and the students' level of success with bilingual education, the most common problems that they have to face in monolingual areas and how to solve them.

GET D!RTY!
Next time you're signing with your friends, drop the ASL textbook formality and start flashing the signs they don't teach in any classroom, including:
- cool slang
- funny insults
- explicit sex terms
- raw swear words
"Dirty Sign Language" teaches casual everyday words and expressions like:
- Peace out!
- Asshole.
- Bit me!
- Dumbfuck!
- Boner
- I'm hung like a horse.

Over last thirty years, new technology, fashion, and social set-ups have spawned new cliches galore. Everything on the Internet is available at the 'click of a mouse', TV presenters ask the audience to 'give it up' when they want them to applaud, call centres tell us 'we value your call' even though 'all our operators are busy'. And if you're 'gobsmacked' by all this you may be told to 'get a life', 'chill out' or 'whatever'. It's Not Rocket Science sifts through all aspects of modern life to find the most prevalent, ubiquitous and downright irritating cliches of our age. This high-octane, caffeine-fuelled, dictionary of cliches highlights the freshly-hackneyed phrases we're being subjected to 24/7. So how good is that? And what's not to like?

The contributors to this collection address a range of issues in Caribbean linguistics. At this stage of Caribbean development, it is critical that we have a broader appreciation of the significance of the languages of the region for developing a deeper sense of self and for understanding others who have shared a common Caribbean experience. The linguists in this volume interrogate the interpretations of the history of our Caribbean languages, the use of these languages for literary expression and their role in the democratization of education and the development of Caribbean people. Several of the articles deal with profoundly controversial topics, including the question of competence in a Creole environment; the expansion of Rastafarianism globally and how word-formation devices reflect Rastafarian thinking; the use of the vernacular in West Indian education; the relevance of vernacular literacy for education; the use of Creole in Caribbean literary texts; and how to determine dialect boundaries, especially in linguistic situations in which Creoles from two distinct lexical bases vie for social space and supremacy. The work is dedicated to the distinguished Caribbean linguist Pauline Christie and celebrates her contribution to the study of linguistics in the Caribbean.

This book presents a new and controversial theory about dialect contact and the formation of new colonial dialects. It examines the genesis of Latin American Spanish, Canadian French and North American English, but concentrates on Australian and South African English, with a particular emphasis on the development of the newest major variety of the language, New Zealand English. Peter Trudgill argues that the linguistic growth of these new varieties of English was essentially deterministic, in the sense that their phonologies are the predictable outcome of the mixture of dialects taken from the British Isles to the Southern Hemisphere in the 19th century. These varieties are similar to one another, not because of historical connections between them, but because they were formed out of similar mixtures according to the same principles. A key argument is that social factors such as social status, prestige and stigma played no role in the early years of colonial dialect development, and that the 'work' of colonial new-dialect formation was carried out by children over a period of two generations. The book also uses insights derived from the study of early forms of these colonial dialects to shed light back on the nature of 19th-century English in the British Isles.

"We need a philosophy of both history and spirit to deal with the problems we touch upon here. Yet we would be unduly rigorous if we were to wait for perfectly elaborated principles before speaking philosophically of politics." Thus Merleau-Ponty introduces "Adventures of the Dialectic, " his study of Marxist philosophy and thought. In this study, containing chapters on Weber, Lukacs, Lenin, Sartre, and Marx himself, Merleau-Ponty investigates and attempts to go beyond the dialectic.

The cowboy — that enigmatic, larger-than-life icon of our culture —has long been considered a figure of fast hands, steel nerves, and few words. But according to Ramon Adams, cowboys, once among themselves, enjoyed a vivid, often boisterous repartee. You might say that around a campfire they could make more noise than “a jackass in a tin barn.” Here in one volume is a complete guide to cowboy-speak. Like many of today’s foreign language guides, this handy book is organized not alphabetically but situationally, lest you find yourself in Texas at a loss for words. There are sections on the ranch, the cowboy’s duties, riding equipment, the roundup, roping, branding, even square dancing. There are words and phrases you’ll recognize because they’ve filtered into everyday language — “blue lightnin’,” “star gazin’,” “the whole shebang” — plus countless others that, sadly, are seldom heard in current speech: “lonely as a preacher on pay night,” “restless as a hen on a hot griddle,” “crooked as a snake in a cactus patch.” As entertaining as it is authoritative, COWBOY LINGO captures the living speech of the Great Plains and serves as a window into the soul of the American West.

What do you call a paper bag in Scots? How would you describe a dull day in Scots? This comprehensive dictionary of words and phrases is for all who want to use the Scots language. * A unique dictionary, with 15,000 English-Scots entries * Many examples showing Scots in use * Clear layout, easily understood entries

Before the 1760s -- with the major exception of Chaucer -- nearly all of Middle English literature lay undiscovered and ignored. Because established scholars regarded later medieval literature as primitive and barbaric, the study of this rich literary heritage was relegated to antiquarians and dilettantes. In The Making of Middle English, 1765-1910, David Matthews chronicles the gradual rediscovery of this literature and the formation of Middle English as a scholarly pursuit.

Matthews details how the careers, class positions, and ambitions of only a few men gave shape and direction to the discipline. Mostly from the lower middle class, they worked in the church or in law and hoped to exploit medieval literature for financial success and social advancement. Where Middle English was concerned, Matthews notes, these scholars were self-taught, and their amateurism came at the price of inaccurately edited and often deliberately "improved" texts intended for a general public that sought appealing, rather than authentic, reading material.

This study emphasizes the material history of the discipline, examining individual books and analyzing introductions, notes, glossaries, promotional materials, lists of subscribers, and owners' annotations to assess the changing methodological approaches of the scholars and the shifts in readership. Matthews explores the influence of aristocratic patronage and the societies formed to further the editing and publication of texts. And he examines the ideological uses of Middle English and the often contentious debates between these scholars and organizations about the definition of Englishness itself.

A thorough work of scholarship, The Making of MiddleEnglish presents for the first time a detailed account of the formative phase of Middle English studies and provides new perspectives on the emergence of medieval studies, canon formation, the politics of editing, and the history of the book.

With contributions by some of the leading scholars in the field, Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson is a distinguished collection of essays on Old and Middle English literature and textual analysis. Focusing on issues ranging from philology to literary criticism, the essays represent a variety of perspectives in Old and Middle English scholarship. Words and Works: Studies in Medieval English Language and Literature in Honour of Fred C. Robinson is a worthy tribute to one of the outstanding figures in Old English scholarship in the last quarter of this century.