Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable (Hardcover, 2nd Revised edition)

The first edition of Brewer's Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable was warmly praised on publication in 2000: 'I can't remember when I last learnt quite so many different things from just one book', said Craig Brown in the Mail on Sunday. The new edition focuses not just on the linguistic and cultural resonance of thousands of contemporary words and phrases (the 'phrase' component), but also on the riches of the modern verbal imagination as expressed in a host of titles, characters and allusions from cultural arenas as diverse as film, literature, art, music, comic strips and computer games (the 'fable' component). For this second edition, new editors John Ayto and Ian Crofton have polished, revised and updated the entire existing text and added some 1000 new articles. The latter include recent words and phrases (bootylicious, 9/11), words and characters from recent literature (daemon, Hogwarts), and - continuing the century-old Brewer's practice of recording unexpected information that is not available in other general reference books - a range of 'list entries' on topics as diverse as words and phrases in British Asian English and some unfamiliar foreign translations of well-known movie titles.