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Dictionary of English Folklore

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traditional beliefs, customs, myths, and superstitions

How would you find out what myths are attached to hedgehogs – or about cures for warts? It’s no good looking in the excellent Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, because that deals with sayings and people, not beliefs and activities. This Dictionary of English Folklore is a compendium of national beliefs which describes in reasonably objective terms the customs, myths, and superstitions associated with traditional English culture.

Dictionary of English Folklore It excludes other parts of the British Isles on the grounds that Scotland, Ireland and Wales have their own languages, through which these beliefs have been transmitted. And if even a fraction of these beliefs are alive and well in the twenty-first century, it speaks volumes for the strength of tradition. It covers what it calls ‘oral and performance’ genres – such as cheese rolling, Morris dancing, and well dressing – which I can confirm are alive and popular in the part of England that I inhabit (except for the cheese rolling: we just eat it and have the oldest, Cheshire).

Mythical characters such as Robin Hood, Merlin, Beowulf, and father Christmas are examined – as well as what people believe about parts of the body. This includes the significance of certain fingers, the eyebrows, the nose, and especially the thumb – from ‘OK’ to ‘obscene’.

The significance of special days in the calendar are well documented – All Saints’ day, St Agnes’ Eve (especially significant for love) – and there are beliefs associated with simple items such as plants – cowslip, parsley, foxglove, and clover.

They also cover archaeological items such as Stonehenge, Camelot, and my own special favourite ever since I first cycled past it as a youth – the Cerne Abbas Giant.

The line the authors take is a reasonable compromise between detached description and sympathetic endorsement of these beliefs. They are not afraid to debunk some ideas – such as the belief that ‘Ring-a-ring-a-roses’ is connected with the Great Plague. (The first English versions were recorded in a New Year ceremony in Allendale, Northumberland, in which the men march through the village with blazing tar barrels – a custom which only started in 1858.)

So if you want to check out fairy rings, Devil’s hoofprints, frog showers, pancake races, sin-eating, and the special significance of Saturday – it’s all here. If there’s evidence, they give it. If not, they usually give it the benefit of the doubt. You can make up your own mind.

© Roy Johnson 2003

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J. Simpson (ed), Dictionary of English Folklore, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003, pp.420, ISBN: 0198607660

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Dictionary of Euphemisms

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how not to say what you mean

Don’t be fooled by the title. The Dictionary of Euphemisms is much more than a collection of polite expressions. It’s also a detailed inventory of slang, sexual code terms, metaphors, evasiveness, underworld argot, and indecent language. The terms are explained, discussed, illustrated, and commented upon in a witty and it has to be said rather dryly satirical manner. The compiler is a business man who has no truck with fashionable political correctness or weak-kneed liberalism, and he takes a particular interest in the way ‘professions’ avoid speaking plainly of their doings. The obvious topics which invoke euphemism are sex, lavatories, drinking, drugs, crime, and death.

Dictionary of EuphemismsBut the not-so-obvious are commerce, politics, warfare, illness, and ideological belief. He gives an explanation of each term, a note on its origin where appropriate, and an example of its use in print. So much one might expect in a serious work of reference, but it is the additional notes which give the book its zest and resonance.

language swear words
A shortened form of bad language:

I’ll have no man usin’ language i’ my house. (D.Murray, 1886—he was not a Trappist abbot)

In America language arts is educational and sociological jargon for the ability to speak coherently.

He has no hesitation in exposing the evasions in current political correctness: African-descended = black (never used for Egyptians, Moroccans, or Boers). And he’s particularly good at reminding us of the euphemisms of everyday life:

after-shave = perfume for men;
haute cuisine = small portions of expensive food;
family = not pornographic.

He’s not without a witty turn of phrase:

bestseller a book of which the first impression is not remaindered
consultant a senior employee who has been dismissed

and he’s also good at uncovering military euphemism:

deliver to drop an explosive on an enemy
air support a military attack

Linguistically, it’s amazing how one word can be used for completely opposite meanings, and how many different meanings can be squeezed out of a single word – such as do and go.

There are lots of expressions so common you will hardly think of them as euphemisms – such as happen to in the expression ‘if anything should happen to me’ – meaning ‘to die’.

The latest fourth edition has been revised and updated to include recent coinages, there is a thematic index, and quite an interesting bibliography. This is a browser’s treasure trove. I took it on holiday and after a week’s bad weather had only got as far as letter D. It’s a must-have for anyone interested in language and the way it is used in everyday life.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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R.W.Holder, The Oxford Dictionary of Euphemisms, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 4th edition 2008, pp.432, ISBN: 0199235171

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Dictionary of Foreign Words & Phrases

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What is the plural of fez? How should we pronounce millefeuille? And where would you see a strabismus? The words can come from anywhere: the Latin, German, and French by whom we were once occupied, imports from Britain’s own former colonies, and modern coinages from around the world. The Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases includes a guide to pronunciation, over 8,000 entries, and the words and phrases are drawn from over forty languages – including Afrikaans, Chinese, Greek, Hebrew, Hindustani, Latin, Malay, and Turkish.

Dictionary of Foreign Words and PhrasesIf ever you had any doubt concerning the English Language’s propensity to soak up and use words from many other languages, have a look at this amazing collection. Entries run from the Greco-Roman import abacus, a cappella, and ab initio through futon and moloch to tamagotchi and the German Zwischenzug, which didn’t mean ‘through train’ as I thought but turned out to be a chess move.

There are details of the history of each word or phrase, including its language of origin and any original spelling, and an account of its current use in English. There’s also an appendix in which the terms included are listed by their language of origin as well as the century during which they were introduced into English.

Quotations are used throughout the text to illustrate the terms in their English context. A typical example reads as follows:

deus ex machina noun phrase L17 Modern Latin (translation of Greek theos ek mekhanes, literally, ‘god from the machinery’). A power, event, or person arriving in the nick of time to solve a difficulty; a providential (often rather contrived) interposition, especially in a novel or play.

  • The ‘machine’ was originally the device by which deities were suspended above the stage in the theatre in classical antiquity. The phrase is generally used in its entirety but also occurs abbreviated to ex machina, with another agent of providence substituted for deus (see quotation 1996(2)).
    attributive 1996 Spectator The deus ex machina resolution of the drama may provide one of the most feeble denouements in all opera.
    1996 Times In this ideal scenario, growth in Europe turns up and deficits come down without anyone on this side of the Atlantic having to do anything. EMU ex machina.

This is a wonderfully rich and useful source of reference. Like most other specialist dictionaries, it profits by ommission. That is, all the obvious and boring stuff is left out. What remains is an excellent source of reference for anyone who is interested in words and their origins.

Because the entries are from such a wide variety of sources, reading continuously is a curiously refreshing experience. It might seem a bit nerdish to admit the fact, but I read the entire collection from cover to cover.

Oh, and by the way, the plural of fez is fezzes. Bet you didn’t know that.

© Roy Johnson 2010

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Oxford Dictionary of Foreign Words and Phrases, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2nd edition 2010, pp.432, ISBN: 0199543682

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Dictionary of Media and Communications

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definitions and explanations of new media terms

Dictionary of Media and Communications is an attempt to solve an interesting problem. I once bought a dictionary of computer technology (as it was then called). It was huge, comprehensive, and was written by an expert. Twelve months later there were terms I needed to look up that simply weren’t in there. That’s how fast new language is being created in the field of information technology (as it is now called). The same is largely true for media and communications. But in the meantime publishers have realised that works of this type need their own web sites that are regularly updated.

Dictionary of Media and CommunicationsDoes this mean that dictionaries in the form of printed books are obsolete? I think not – because for most people it’s still more convenient to reach a book off the shelf to solve a problem or look up a definition. And that’s quite apart from the secondary pleasure of reference books – making those serendipitous discoveries on adjacent pages.

With definitions of 2,300 terms this is without doubt the most comprehensive in its field. But its unique selling point is that terms are defined in a variety of contexts. Nuances of a term may vary depending on its use in semiotics, sociology, or film making. Entries run from aberrant decoding and above-the-fold via McLuhanism and male gaze, to yaw, zapping, and zoom. A typical entry reads as follows:

hypertext 1. A method, devised by Berners-Lee as part of his *World Wide Web software, of embedding omni-directional *links within a given digital *text (encoded in the form of an *HTML document and displayed on a *web browser) which connect to other HTML texts without the need for extra navigation. For example, a selected word of a text document or an area of an image document is defined as a *hyperlink which, when clicked on, loads the document at that address into the browser window. Hypertext is designed to be media independent (a text can link to a sound file, an image, or even a location in a *virtual world.) which makes it a *metonym for the versatility of *digital media generally. 2.2. A visionary concept of Ted Nelson (an American new media theorist, b.1937) for a *human-computer interface in which computers present a given text from multiple viewpoints, making it a malleable object that can be ‘played with’ in order to deepen a person’s understanding. For example, a hypertext version of Hamlet’s ‘To be, or not to be’ soliloquy might consist of a standard edition of printed text, a facsimile of the earliest known version, a video recording of a performance, critical notes, and articles – all of which could be expanded from or collapsed back into the original text by clicking on a series of bi-directional links.. 3. For Genette, literary works which derive from, relate, or allude to an earlier work see also INTERTEXTUALITY. 4. Any text structured in a way that is nonlinear or non sequential, having no clear beginning, middle, and end, or in which the reader has control over the sequence. Where such texts link to others through *hyperlinks, the boundaries of the text may be blurred or the text may be perceived as unbounded.
See web links – Project Xanadu

It also has a listing of micro-biographies of major theorists and practitioners, plus a bibliography of suggested further reading. The compilers deny the existence of ‘key entries’, but many of the important entries are cross referenced and linked to the book’s web site.

The fields of reference include literary studies, semiotics, digital technology, broadcast media, journalism, film studies, psychology, and cultural theory. It’s aimed at people studying in any of these disciplines, but the definitions and explanations are accessible to the general reader.

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© Roy Johnson 2011

Daniel Chandler and Rod Munday, Dictionary of Media and Communication, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011, pp.472, ISBN: 0199568758

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Dictionary of Misquotations

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What They Didn’t Say: misattributions and apocrypha

Play it again, Sam is the classic much-used phrase which is in fact a misquotation. What Ingrid Bergman actually says to Dooley Wilson in Casablanca is Play it, Sam. Play ‘As Time Goes By’. And Humphrey Bogart later demonstrating his emotional stoicism, says If she can stand it, I can. Play it. But for general circulation the misquotation has stuck. This Dictionary of Misquotations is a compendium of well-known sayings, phrases, and quotations which are all inaccurate representations of the original.

Dictionary of MisquotationsThey get changed, mangled, and abbreviated for all sorts of reasons – and in many cases the later version completely obliterates the original. Sometimes they are what people mistakenly think or wish what somebody had said. What causes this to happen? Well, on seeing all these examples brought together, the answer appears to be that the misquotations are all slicker, more rounded and memorable than the originals. One example after another illustrates this point.

During the afternoon of 11 September, Jo Moore, a British government adviser, wrote a memo saying ‘It is now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury’. But it’s the much pithier a good day to bury bad news which has entered common language. Similarly, Harold Macmillan only ever mentioned ‘the opposition of events’, but the more memorable yet completely invented phrase Events, dear boy, events has been attributed to him, and it has stuck.

Charles Boyer never said Come with me to the Casbah (in fact he said the rumour had hampered his career); James Callaghan never said Crisis? What crisis?” (it was the Sun wot did it); Tarzan never said Me Tarzan – You Jane (though Johnny Weissmuller did); and Sherlock Holmes never said Elementary, my dear Watson.

You can see from the examples that there’s a tendency towards poetic repetition, parallel phrases, syntactic inversion. Mae West actually said Is that a gun in your pocket, or are you just pleased to see me? – but it is most often quoted as pistol.

And not all are misquotations: some are complete fabrications. When working on the Times in the 1930s for instance, Claude Cockburn claimed to have mischevously written the dullest headline ever: Small earthquake in Chile. Not many dead. But no such entry has ever been traced.

So – good fun and clarification all around. And a salutary lesson that we need to take care if invoking these expressions whose origins seem so assured. This book has appeared just in time for the Xmas market, and it will make an excellent present for anyone who’s interested in language and how it is used – and misused.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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What They Didn’t Say: a Book of Misquotations, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006, pp.153, ISBN: 0199203598

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Dictionary of Modern Quotations

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famous quotes, sayings, film lines, slogans, catchphrases

The Dictionary of Modern Quotations is a collection of quotes which offers a vivid picture both of the world today, and of the landmark events and key voices leading up to it. From Scott’s Antarctic Expedition in 1912 to the attack on the World Trade Centre in 2001, it charts watersheds such as two World Wars, as well as the ebbs and flows of popular culture. The new second edition now also includes Soundbites of 2002-3.

Dictionary of Modern Quotations It contains more than five thousand quotations from authors as diverse as Elizabeth Arden, Billy Connolly, Bertolt Brecht, Linda Evangelista, Eddie Izzard, Alison Lurie, Carl Sagan, William Shatner, and Desmond Tutu. The dictionary is author-organized with generous cross-referencing and indexed by both keywords and themes.

This latest edition also contains new categories for film taglines and cartoon captions which have been added to accompany misquotations. It is designed to answer the questions, ‘Who said that…and when…and why?’ And to tell the truth, is also answers questions such as ‘Did he really say that!?

My favourites are still wisecracks from the likes of Woody Allen:

If only God would give me some clear sign. Like making a large deposit in my name in a Swiss bank.

or Grouch Marx, earlier in the same tradition:

I’ve been around so long, I knew Doris Day before she was a virgin.

Some entries make you want to read more – as in the case of the now almost forgotten Hilaire Belloc:

I’m tired of Love: I’m still more tired of Rhyme.
But money gives me pleasure all the time.

Or this from James Elroy Flecker, an English poet whose name I had not come across before:

I have seen old ships sail like swans asleep
Beyond the village which men still call Tyre,
With leaden age o’ercargoed, dipping deep
For Famagusta and the hidden sun
That rings black Cyprus with a lake of fire.

OK, it has a ring of John Masefield’s Cargoes about it, but it tweaked my appetite for more.

Some of the entries now seem amazingly prescient, such as the remark made by Albert Einstein in 1931:

I am not only a pacifist but a militant pacifist. Nothing will end war unless the people themselves refuse to go to war.

and even more so, this from French general Foch on the Treaty of Versailles in 1919:

This is not a peace treaty, it is an armistice for twenty years.

Spot on, general.

This latest updated edition now also includes famous soundbites as well as memorable quotes from the famous (and infamous); it also includes advertising slogans, catchphrases, lines from films, misquotations, newspaper headlines, and political sayings.

If you like these anthologies, either as a serious reference or a rich source of pleasant browsing, this is a good example of its kind.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Elizabeth Knowles (ed) Dictionary of Modern Quotations, 3rd edition, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.496, ISBN: 0199547467

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Dictionary of Modern Slang

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street-speak, vulgar language, swearing and obscenities

As the editors say in their introduction to this latest edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang, ‘A year, to paraphrase Harold Wilson, is a long time in slang’. In fact the principal difficulty in compiling lexical resources of this type is what to leave out – because a great deal of slang is very evanescent. Oxford University Press have the advantage of compiling their dictionaries from the huge ‘Corpus’ of recorded language use which makes up the data base from which their publications are compiled. This is a collection of examples of how the English language is actually being used, drawn from the printed word – from literary novels and specialist journals to everyday newspapers and magazines, and from Hansard to the language of chatrooms, emails, and weblogs. The database contains over two billion words, and expands at the rate of 350 million words a year.

Dictionary of Modern SlangSo this assembly of what’s current has a better chance than most of being directly relevant – though you should remember that in order to qualify for inclusion in a dictionary, words have to be written down, not simply spoken. OUP also stipulate that they have to remain there for some time before they are considered for inclusion in dictionaries

The entries of this compilation run from abso-bloody-lutely and Acapulco gold via manky and meeja to wuss, yuckie, and zonker. As you can perhaps detect from this random selection, it’s rather polite in tone. There’s little of the ribaldry of Roger’s Profanisaurus or the scholarly rigour of Eric Partridge’s Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English

There are lots of very dated references such as Ally-Pally (BBC) and Andrew (the navy) which I seriously doubt are in general circulation now – except with people over retirement age. But I was glad to see that it includes rhyming slang, as well as street language from other English-speaking cultures such as America and Australia, so the book could be useful if you’re thinking of emigrating.

There are also some linguistic curios in the form of words for which the etymology is simply not known – such as eighty-six (to refuse to serve someone in a restaurant) and others which just seem genuinely unusual and very entertaining – such as copacetic (outstanding) and gamahuche (cunnilingus or fellatio).

There is a certain respect given to lewd slang. The editors don’t balk at including carpet-muncher and mantee, but these entries are noticeably brief, and ladies in sensible shoes doesn’t get listed. They offer bristols and boobs, but not headlamps or hooters. I also looked in vain for the expressive rack, the amusingly faux-naive front-bottom, and the very well known Ugandan discussions. Entries on some less contentious issues are almost embarrassingly passé – such as goggle box (television) and knuckle sandwich (a punch).

There’s also a thematic index – because many of the terms are drawn from the worlds of drugs, sport, youth culture, and television, as well as traditional slang topics such as sex, money, and bodily functions. I always think that compilations of this kind are quire good fun, but all in all, there’s not much here that your maiden aunt could object to.

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© Roy Johnson 2010

John Ayto and John Simpson, Dictionary of Modern Slang, Oxford: Oxford University Press, (second edition) 2010, pp.408, ISBN: 0199232059

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Dictionary of Nicknames

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private names for the notorious, famous, and infamous

This specialist Dictionary of Nicknames offers a collection of names associated with historical figures, politicians, sports stars, actors, entertainers, organizations, and places. It also includes nicknames which have become so famous they have eclipsed the real name of the original – such as Botticelli, Tintoretto, and El Greco. A well-coined nickname is supposed to summarise an individual’s reputation, personality, or principal characteristic. And if it’s good, or funny, it will stick.

Dictionary of Nicknames For instance when the ferocious, right-wing, black-haired, English MP Anne Widdecome was lecturing the Labour government from her position in the shadow cabinet, she was given the rather unflattering nickname of Doris Karloff. It stuck, because it seemed so appropriate – even though she is now an Alice-band wearing blonde. And when she said in her turn of her boss Michael Howard, that he ‘had something of the night about him’, it helped to nail his reputation as a political vampire.

Some of the potted biographies which accompany the entries are quite revealing – such as that on America’s Sweetheart (Mary Pickford) who was not only a star but became an astute businesswoman who founded the production company United Artists with Charlie Chaplin, D.W.Griffiths, and her husband Douglas Fairbanks.

Nicknames can be affectionate, approbatory, respectful, scornful, scurrilous, derogatory, or even vitriolic. Some of those listed here are also pretty lame, such as The Blind Poet for John Milton. Others are quite cruel, such as The Great Whore for Anne Boleyn – so named because she failed to produce an heir for Henry VIII, and was alleged to have many lovers.

It’s a dictionary full of pop and media trivia – such as the fact that Bing Crosby got his nickname from reading a comic called The Bingville Bugle which featured a character called Bingo, a boy with large floppy ears.

I think it was a mistake to exclude generic nicknames such as Chalky White and Dusty Miller, because these are of interest. But as compensation, there’s a special appendix of football club nicknames, British army regiments, and US state names.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Andrew Delahunty, Oxford Dictionary of Nicknames, Oxford: Oxford University Press, new edition 2006, ISBN: 0198609485

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Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

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explanations, origins, and definitions

This Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is a paperback cut-down version of the complete Oxford Dictionary of Phrase & Fable. It contains over 10,000 phrases, sayings, and allusions – including single words and names that crop up in cultural references – and offers a brief explanation of their meanings and origins. It also includes terms from the classical world of Greece and Rome, as well as other mythologies and religious beliefs – including folk customs, superstitions, and other forms of popular beliefs, as well as factual history and common record.

Dictionary of Phrase and Fable So, there are potted biographies of St Lawrence, the Christian martyr, as well as Lazarus, the man who rather miraculously rose from the dead. Ulysses sits fairly closely alongside the Unnabomber – which suggests to me that this book would be a fairly useful resource for crossword puzzlers and participants in my local pub quiz. Entries run from Aaron and abacus to Zoroastrianism, Zorro, and Zwinglian – respectively a monotheistic pre-Islamic religion, a Californian-Spanish Robin Hood, and a supporter of the sixteenth century Swiss protestant reformer.

There are also up-to-date entries on historic events such as 9/11 and tsunami, and I was glad to see that dodgy dossier was included – so that it will hang as long as possible like an albatross around Tony Blair’s neck where it belongs.

Commonly used words which occur in a number of expressions are given their own sub-categories – as follows:

milk
milk for babies something easy and pleasant to learn; especially in allusion to 1 Corinthians 3:2 and Hebrews 5:12, contrasted with ‘strong meat’ (see > STRONG).
the milk in the coconut a puzzling fact or circumstance, the crux of something (informal, first recorded in the US in the mid 19th century).
milk of human kindness compassion, sympathy; originally from Shakespeare’s Macbeth (1606), in Lady Macbeth’s expression of her anxiety that her husband lacked the necessary ruthlessness to kill King Duncan and seize the throne.
mother’s milk in figurative usage, something providing sustenance or regarded by a person as entirely appropriate to them.
See also > why buy a COW when milk is so cheap? it is no use crying over spilt milk at > CRY, land of milk and honey at
> LAND2

It includes fictional characters such as Anna Karenina, historic events such as the name of the B-29 bomber that dropped the atomic bomb on Hiroshima (Enola Gay), obscure terms such as oxymoron and palimpsest, and important figures such as Hindenburg and Rasputin, as well as the possible origins of expressions such as backing into the limelight, and even the fashionable jumping the shark.

This is a serious modern contender challenging the longstanding supremacy of Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable – a book of which it is said nobody would find of any use, but which has been in print for over 150 years, because it is so eccentric and funny.

© Roy Johnson 2006

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Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Oxford: Oxford University Press (2nd edn) 2006, pp.805, ISBN: 019920246X

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Dictionary of Proverbs

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explanations, history, and origin of proverbial sayings

A proverb is a traditional saying which offers advice or presents a moral in a short or pithy manner – as in You can’t have your cake and eat it. Now reissued and updated, this reference dictionary provides the reader with over 1,100 of the best-known English proverbs from around the world. For this fourth edition, the explanatory material has been expanded and new, recently coined proverbs added including Another day, another dollar, Bad things come in threes, and Better to live one day as a tiger than a thousand years as a sheep.

Oxford Dictionary of ProverbsThe collection makes a useful point that proverbs fall into three main categories. First, abstract statements expressing general truths (Adversity makes strange bedfellows); second, everyday experiences which express a general truth (Don’t put all your eggs in one basket); and third, classical examples of advice and warning (Feed a cold and starve a fever).

This is the first time that the Internet has been tapped to provide examples, which range from Absence makes the heart grow fonder to If youth knew, if age could.

Many of these expressions are traditional, but proverbial coinings continue into the present day – as in the recent There’s no such thing as a free lunch. And many are surprisingly modern – such as A change is as good as a rest, which dates from the end of the nineteenth century.

There are also thematic entries which take a key word and record the proverbs which use it – as in the following example:

old see also BETTER be an old man’s darling, than a young man’s slave; you cannot CATCH old birds with chaff; there’s no FOOL like an old fool; there’s many a GOOD tune played on an old fiddle; HANG a thief when he’s young and he’ll no’ steal when he’s old; … and so on …

A typical entry records the proverb with key word highlighted, then a record of where the phrase has appeared since its first appearance in print:

the HAND that rocks the cradle rules the world
1865 W.R.WALLACE in J.K.Hoyt Cyclopedia of Practical Quotations (1896) 402 A mightier power and stronger Man from his throne has hurled, For the hand that rocks the cradle is the hand that rules the world. a 1916 ‘SAKI‘ Toys of Peace (1919) 158 You can’t prevent it; it’s the nature of the sex. The hand that rocks the cradle rocks the world, in a volcanic sense. 1996 Washington Times 10 May A2 The habits of the home in one generation become the morals of society in the next. As the old adage says: ‘The hand that rocks the cradle rules the world’. cf women

Chronologically, the dates of the examples span from Old English After a storm comes a calm (1250) to contemporary notions such as When the going gets tough, the tough get going.

Sometimes explanations of the origins of these expressions are offered; sometimes not. There’s a bibliography and a thematic index.

© Roy Johnson 2008

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Jennifer Speake, The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 5th edition, 2008, pp.400, ISBN: 0199539537

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