Does your English cut the mustard, or do you find that it's wide of the mark?


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Containing more than 5,000 entries, this dictionary covers metaphorical phrases, similes, familiar sayings, and proverbs, providing illustrative quotations from sources as varied as the Bible, the Spectator, and Agatha Christie. It explains meanings and provides historical information for well-known idioms such as cost an arm and a leg, knoks spots off, once in a blue moon, the tip of the iceberg, and many more. Full of fascinating facts, this dictionary is ideal for anyone with interest in the origins of the colloquial, quirky byways of the English language.
Idioms are arranged alphabetically by key word for easy reference. Sayings in British English are supplemented by American English and other expressions.

Article structure The invariable components of the entry structure are the idiom itself with capitalized keyword and any common variants given in brackets, followed by the definition. In addition there may be a label or labels indicating register and/or geographical area, a sentence or short paragraph covering etymological, historical and usage points of interest, and an illustrative quotation. The marking of a quotation with an asterisk indicates it is the earliest example of the use of this idiom yet traced. MSDict Viewer Features The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms is utilized by MSDict Viewer- an innovative dictionary reader specially designed to combine high data compression for memory restricted devices with a fast search algorithm, and user-friendly interface with amazing speed. The viewer supports multiple dictionaries installed at a time.

• Transcriptions facilitating pronunciation
• Support for MMC, memory stick, and SD memory cards
• Stylish user interface with several color schemes
• Hyperlinks between different related articles
• Text font remapping (dynamic changing of font sizes)
• Opportunity to add custom notes to any article in the dictionary so you can save your ideas and examples of usage
• Built-in keyboard

Advanced search and filtering

• Single-tap search, starting on first letter
• Wildcard filtration feature(the use of "*" replaces arbitrary number of symbols within words)
• Opportunity to add custom notes to any article in the dictionary
• Specially enhanced for hi-resolution devices and hi-resolution landscape view mode
• Button allowing quick erase of the query field
• Dynamic word history list for each session

NOTE: Oxford Dictionary of Idioms is an add-on database for MSDict Viewer and will not work as a self-dependent application. The price of the Oxford Idioms database does not include a dictionary viewer.