The American Heritage Dictionary of Idioms by Christine Ammer
Book Description
"Bite the bullet", " get on the stick",
"make no bones about it", " take the cake". The American Heritage(R)
Dictionary of Idioms covers almost 10,000 expressions. Its main fare
is, of course, idioms - groups of two or more words that together mean
something different from the literal meaning of the individual words.
In addition, this book discusses verb phrases such as " act up",
"freeze out", and " get down", figures of speech such as "dark horse"
and "blind as a bat", interjections and formulas like "says who" and "
tough beans", common proverbs like a "bird in the hand", and slang
terms such as "buy the farm" and "push up daisies". Each entry is
defined and has an example sentence showing the expression in context.
Most entries offer an explanation of the expression's literal meaning
or origin and include information about its first appearance in
English.