A Dictionary Of English Phrases With Illustrative Sentences

Reprint of the original, first published in 1881.

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Excerpt from Dictionary of English Phrases, With Illustrative Sentences: To Which Are Added Some English Proverbs, and a Selection of Chinese Proverbs and Maxims; A Few Quotations, Words, and Phrases, From the Latin and French Languages These phrases are not the production Of a single writer, or Of a whole school of writers. They are the product of the English-speaking race, and have been coined by the genius of the people. They have been formed to express new relations or new ideas; and this has been done with the existing vocabulary and sometimes with existing phrases, by stamping a new meaning on them, to make them meet the new necessity. As new relations have arisen, and new thoughts have come into being, the necessity has led somebody, sometimes the learned man, sometimes the unlearned, to give expression to these new requirements, not by originating new words, but by taking the words at hand, and so combining them as to make them express the new idea. And as a result we have a set Of expres sions which show the imagination and the native power Of the mind, reveal the character of the people, and give the language its peculiar force and beauty. Neither are they the product of any one time or period. Naturally many date back to the early periods of the growth of the language, because these early peri ods are the creative periods in the history of a people. But the process of form ing these phrases is continually going on, in proportion to the formation of new ideas, or the occurrence of new relations. Most of these phrases are figurative. They express a thought or an act by words which, taken in their literal sense, denote some physical action. Or they sometimes express one physical action by a word or phrase which, in the primary meaning, signifies another physical action. In both of these cases, the language of the idio matic phrase is pictorial. It represents one thing by the picture or image of another. This may be illustrated by one or two phrases. The meaning of the idiomatic (xviii) About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.

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