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This is an entertaining little volume, and oddly addictive to folks who love a good, tired turn of phrase. Open to the M's, for instance, and you'll find "mad as a hatter," which is significantly different from "mad as a hornet," plus a variety of "make" phrases, including "make a clean breast," "make a killing," "make a long story short," "make a monkey out of," and "make hay while the sun shines," as well as "make one tick," "make one's mark," and the simple yet evocative "make waves." Fun as it is, however, to read through the well-worn bromides and homilies, one might wonder about the
Pocket Guide's practical applications.
For the foreign-born student of English, the applications are clear. These are the phrases that drive students crazy, the ones that can't be looked up in a standard dictionary and whose meanings can't be intuited by looking up each word and piecing it all together. Try deciphering "coin a phrase" or "dressed to the nines" if English isn't your first tongue. It's also handy for native speakers for understanding the clichés of other generations and regions. And it's especially worthwhile for writers learning to recognize the trite chestnuts they might want to avoid. When a phrase is so tried and true that it flows from your pen as easy as 1, 2, 3, you can look it up in the Pocket Guide and see if perhaps you might want to find a more original way to express yourself. --Stephanie Gold
From Library Journal
This compulsively readable new addition to Barron's "Pocket Guides" series covers American clich?s from "absence makes the heart grow fonder" to "yellow-bellied." Bell, a professor of management communication at the University of San Francisco and author of A Pocket Guide to Synonyms and A Pocket Guide Thesaurus, identifies three target audiences for his guide: native English speakers who don't understand the clich?s of other generations, non-native speakers of American English baffled by the language's colloquialisms, and writers interested in avoiding clich?s in their work. This is a "quick and dirty" source, providing only concise definitions and the illustrative use of each clich? in a sentence. The absence of an index limits the book's utility somewhat, as does the lack of cross referencing. Bell makes no claims to have written a comprehensive source; those interested in the origins and deeper meanings of clich?s should consult the lengthier and more scholarly entries in Christine Ammer's Have a Nice DayANo Problem: A Dictionary of Clich?s (LJ 1/92) or Betty Kirkpatrick's Clich?s: Over 1500 Phrases Explored and Explained (LJ 7/97). While not as detailed or as inclusive as these sources, this pocket guide is a useful and cheap reference source for people who want to "get down to the brass tacks" of a succinct definition. Recommended for quick reference or for idle minutes at the reference desk.AKathleen Collins, Arizona State Univ. West Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.
