Longman Dictionary of English Idioms [antikvár]

Preface The aim of this dictionary is to provide the student of English with a thorough coverage of the most common idiomatic phrases in use. We have attempted to give as much information and guidance about the use of idioms as is possible in a dictionary. All the definitions have been written in the controlled vocabulary listed on pp. 379 to 386 in order to help the foreign learner of English. The example sentences are drawn from a variety of written and spoken sources—books, newspapers, magazines, recorded conversations, and radio and television programmes—and have been chosen for simplicity of sentence structure and language. These citations are not always in the controlled defining vocabulary; when a citation is too complex in structure or language to be useful as an illustrative example of an idiom, invented example sentences have been used instead, and these have been specially written in the defining vocabulary. Together with the context in which an idiom may be used, we have described in what ways an idiomatic phrase may vary, whether in wording or in grammatical details such as the inflection of nouns and verbs, passivization, the mobility of certain elements in the phrase, etc. This information is shown by means of a few simple symbols in the headword and by the short grammatical descriptions that accompany main entries. Since many idioms have a large number of variant forms, these have all been entered as cross-references to a common form of the idiom. Usage notes have been written for a number of idioms which may present particular difficulties, either because they are highly variable or to warn the student that some idioms may sound awkward unless used by a skilled speaker of English. The dictionary is intended not only for learners of English. We hope that these definitions and illustrations, the comments on usage and grammar, and the notes on the origins of many idiomatic phrases, will be valuable and of interest to all speakers of the language. T. H. Long Delia Summers September 1979