Language reference

Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase & Fable is dedicated to the history, culture, and mythology of the Emerald Isle. With a stunningly eclectic array of more than 6,000 entries on words, phrases, names, titles, people, events, and places, it is an invaluable work of reference. And in the great tradition of Brewer's, it is guaranteed to intrigue, inform, and delight lovers of the arcane, the esoteric, and the unexpected.

A work of nearly 900 pages in print, now available for the first time digitally, the uniquely wide-ranging and addictively browsable Brewer's Dictionary of Irish Phrase & Fable takes you on a fascinating journey around the island of Ireland. From Pearse to Paisley, the Floozie in the Jacuzzi to the Hags with the Bags, Kerrygold to Kerry jokes, and Beckett to Boyzone, it is a cabinet stuffed with Irish curiosities of every conceivable variety.

A vivid and affectionate celebration of the whole island of Ireland, this is the perfect book for anyone passionate about Ireland and its history.

From the Bloomsbury Group to the Camberwell Carrot and Samuel Johnson to Boris Johnson, Brewer's Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable shines a welcome light into the enticingly shadowy corners of London's language, culture, and history. More than 2,000 entries encompass words, phrases, historical events, notable London characters (both real and fictional), customs and ceremonies, institutions, artistic and literary works, celebrations and events, inventions, streets and districts, anecdotes, names and nicknames, terminology, and slang.

Whether you are a Londoner through and through or whether you prefer to experience this bustling and cacophonous city from the safety of your armchair, Brewer's Dictionary of London Phrase and Fable will bring the heart and soul of London to your (virtual) bookshelf.

With thousands of contemporary words and phrases and a wide selection of entries on the cultural preoccupations of our times, Brewer’s Dictionary of Modern Phrase & Fable is an invaluable guide to modern language and culture. Focusing on the 20th and 21st centuries, it applies the trademark Brewer’s treatment to a fascinating selection of buzzwords, catchphrases, slang, nicknames, fictional characters and intriguing cultural phenomena from pop culture to politics, literature to technology.

Encompassing everything from the Battle of Britain to the Brazilian wax, McCarthyism to McDonald’s and Waiting for Godot to Wallace and Gromit, Brewer’s Modern is wonderfully diverse, addictively browsable and bound to broaden your horizons.

Much loved for its wit and wisdom since 1870, Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable takes you on a captivating adventure through its trademark blend of language, culture, myth and legend. As Susie Dent explains in the foreword, Brewer’s “is not a straightforward dictionary, nor is it an encyclopaedia. It is, in fact, unlike any other reference book that exists, anywhere.” This nineteenth edition encapsulates all the charm and wit that characterise its predecessors and maintains the standards of scholarship and eclecticism that have long been its hallmark.

Thoroughly updated with over 100 new and revised entries – think crowdsourcing, cyberpunk, iPad and mash-up – this unique resource is guaranteed to delight, entertain and inspire in the best Brewer’s tradition. Discover Brewer’s take on angels, heraldry, pub signs and recluses, and delve into the lexicographical world of the eggcorn. Whether you are a committed Brewerphile or a newcomer to its pages of fascinating entries, this edition will draw you in and keep you glued to its rich mix of eccentric nuggets.

This online-only Dictionary of Abbreviations, exclusive to Oxford Reference Online, includes over 100,000 abbreviations and acronyms in alphabetical and numerical order, including the world's airports, airlines, currencies, astronomical signs and symbols, atomic numbers, and stocks codes, as well as computer, country, financial, medical, military, police, publishing, railway, scientific, technical, transportation, and United Nations abbreviations and acronyms, not to mention European food additive numbers!

Over 3,400 entries

A revealing guide to the richness and colour of the Australian language, this fascinating work records a distinctive, inventive slang and provides a unique insight into Australian life and culture. First published in 1978, this dictionary includes the earliest and most recent colloquial coinages including words and idioms drawn from a wide range of sources. Each entry features relevant context e.g. origin and derivation, and enduring colloquialisms have as many as ten citations from original works. This fifth edition features an expanded introduction and contains over 300 new entries. In addition, more than 900 of the previous entries have been revised and updated.

The Encyclopedia of Rhetoric is a comprehensive survey of one of the Western world's oldest disciplines. Its 150 entries, written by leading scholars, bring together expertise in classical studies, philosophy, literature, literary theory, cultural studies, speech, and communications in a comprehensive treatment of the art of persuasion. The Encyclopedia is the most wide-ranging reference work of its kind, combining theory, history, and practice, with a special emphasis on public speaking, performance, and communication.

Based on The Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology, the principal authority on the origin and development of English words, The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Etymology contains a wealth of information about the English language and its history. Find out where the words 'bungalow' and 'assassin' came from, what 'nice' meant in the Middle Ages and much more.

This dictionary features the entertaining histories behind hundreds of eponyms, such as bowdlerize (from the censorious Thomas Bowdler), bikini from the atoll, and the Salisbury steak, a dish of hamburger and brown gravy named after James H. Salisbury, an English physician who promoted a diet of ground beef. There are hundreds more - discover to whom we owe the terms hooker, sideburn, zeppelin, the cardigan sweater, pamphlet, robot, and argyle socks.

Over 4,500 entries

‘offers impeccable advice’ - Sally Baker, The Times

This invaluable quick-reference work, based on the latest edition of the renowned Fowler’s Concise Dictionary of Modern English Usage, offers the best available advice on English usage in an accessible quick-reference format. Drawing on the unrivalled resources of Oxford’s English Dictionaries language monitoring programme, it provides clear, practical and up-to-date guidance on questions of grammar, spelling, style, and word choice. Jeremy Butterfield has judiciously revised the text to reflect the usage practices and concerns of the 21^st century.

‘offers impeccable advice’ – The Times

Over 6,000 entries

This world-famous guide to the English language has been cherished and consulted by writers, editors, academics, and anyone who values good writing, for its practical and reasoned guidance on grammar, style, punctuation, spelling, and word choice since it first appeared in 1926. The new edition – the first in 18 years – has been thoroughly but sensitively revised to reflect English usage in the 21st century, and offers a clear, authoritative, and enlightening picture of the English we use today.

International in scope, the Dictionary provides in-depth coverage of both British and American English usage, with reference also to the English of Australia, Canada, India, New Zealand, and South Africa. The entries are packed with usage examples, some from established literary figures such as Chinua Achebe, Raymond Carver, Iris Murdoch, Harold Pinter, and Vikram Seth, and others from a vast range of newspapers, journals, books, broadcast material, websites, and other digital sources from across the globe, and include references to topical personalities such as Stephen Fry, Prince Harry, Jeremy Paxman, and Wayne Rooney.

Based on the evidence and research of the Oxford Dictionaries Programme, this is the most comprehensive and authoritative guide to usage available.

Over 4,500 entries

When Bryan Garner published the first edition of A Dictionary of Modern American Usage in 1999, the book quickly became one of the most influential style guides ever written for the English language. After four previous editions and over twenty years, our language has evolved in many ways, and the powerful tool of big data has revolutionized lexicography. This extensively revised new edition fully captures these changes, featuring a thousand new entries and over two hundred replacement entries, thoroughly updated usage data and ratios on word frequency based on the Google Ngram Viewer, a more balanced coverage of World Englishes, not just American and British, and the inclusion of gender-neutral language. However, one thing has not changed: in no sense is this a “regular” dictionary but a masterpiece of lexicography written with wit and personality by one of the preeminent authorities on the English language. To put it in David Foster Wallace’s words, Garner’s discussion of rhetoric and style still “borders on genius.”

From the (lost) battle between self-deprecating and self-depreciating to the misuse of it’s for its, from the variant spelling patty-cake taking over pat-a-cake in American English to the singular uses of they, Garner explains the nuances of grammar and vocabulary and the linguistic blunders to which modern writers and speakers are prone, whether in word choice, syntax, phrasing, punctuation, or pronunciation. His empirical approach liberates English from two extremes: from the “purists” who maintain that split infinitives and sentence-ending prepositions are malfeasances and from the linguistic relativists who believe that whatever people say or write must necessarily be accepted.

The purpose of Garner’s dictionary is to help writers, editors, and speakers use the language effectively. And it does so in a playful and persuasive way that will help you sound “grammatical but relaxed, refined but natural, correct but unpedantic.”

Green’s Dictionary of Slang is an unprecedented 10.3 million-word collection of the impertinent, vile, censored, hip, witty, and fascinating slang words of the English language. Covering five centuries of innovation in all English-speaking regions of the world, the Dictionary is the most authoritative, scholarly approach to slang ever attempted. Over 100,000 words are defined; each word is authenticated by genuine and full-referenced citations of its use. This is a remarkable work by the leading slang lexicographer of our time.

"Hours of happy browsing for language lovers" – Observer

Drawing on the unique resources of the Oxford English Dictionary and offering coverage of over 6,000 slang words and expressions from the Cockney ‘abaht’ to the American term ‘zowie’, this is the most authoritative dictionary of slang from the 20th and 21st centuries. The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Slang is a fascinating and entertaining collection, packed with illustrative quotations and providing full details of origins and dates of first printed use. The text contains expressions from around the English-speaking world such as ‘dork’ and ‘cockamamie’ (North America) and ‘giggle-house’ and ‘Jimmy Woodser’ (Australia).

This dictionary provides scientists, science writers, and all who work in scientific publishing with a clear style guide for the presentation of scientific information. In over 9,700 entries, it reflects widely accepted usage and follows the recommendations of international scientific bodies such as IUPAC and IUPAP. The dictionary gives clear guidance on such matters as spellings (American English and British English), punctuation, abbreviations, prefixes and suffixes, units and quantities, and symbols.

Revised and fully updated, this new edition of the Oxford Dictionary for Scientific Writers and Editors includes feature entries on key areas, substantially increased coverage of the life sciences, and new entries in physics, astronomy, chemistry, computer science, and mathematics. New and revised appendices also provide useful supplementary tables including SI units, mathematical symbols, the electromagnetic spectrum, and useful online resources.

This comprehensive and authoritative A-Z guide is an invaluable tool for students, professionals, and publishers working with writing in the fields of physics, chemistry, botany, zoology, biochemistry, genetics, immunology, microbiology, astronomy, mathematics, and computer science.

Over 1,400 entries

This new edition of a landmark Companion notably focuses on World Englishes, English language teaching, English as an international language, and the effect of technological advances on the English language. More than 130 new entries include African American English, British Sign Language, China English, digital literacy, multimodality, social networking, superdiversity, and text messaging. It also includes new biographical entries on key individuals who have had an impact on the English language in recent decades, including Beryl (Sue) Atkins, Adam Kilgariff, and John Sinclair.

It is an invaluable reference for English language students and fascinating reading for any general reader with an interest in language.

Over 1,600 entries

A straightforward and accessible A-Z guide to the diverse and often complex terminology of English grammar. Includes clear and concise definitions which are enhanced by numerous example sentences, as well as relevant quotations from the scholarly literature of the field.

This second edition is written and edited by Professor Bas Aarts of University College London, writer of the acclaimed Oxford Modern English Grammar. It has been fully revised and updated, with particular attention paid to refreshing the example sentences included within the text. There are over 150 new entries that cover current terminology which has arisen since the publication of the first edition, and there are also new entries on the most important English grammars published since the start of the 20th century. Hundreds of new cross-references enhance the user-friendly nature of the text, and the list of works cited has been thoroughly updated to reflect the current state of the field.

All in all, this Dictionary is an invaluable guide to English grammar for all students and teachers of the subject, as well as all those with an informed interest in the English language.

Over 10,000 entries

What is it to ‘cock a snook’? Where is the land of Nod? Who was first to go the extra mile? Find the answers to these questions (and many more!) in the new edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Idioms.

This dictionary uncovers the meanings of myriad phrases and sayings that are used daily in the English language, encompassing more than 10,000 figurative expressions, similes, sayings, and proverbs. More than 400 idioms have been added to this new edition, and comprise recently coined and common sayings alike. New additions include ‘back of the net’, ‘drag and drop’, ‘go it alone’, ‘how come?’, ‘if you ask me’, ‘make your skin crawl’, and ‘wind your neck in’.

Illustrative quotations sourced from the Oxford Corpora give contextual examples of the idioms and their standard usage, and many entries include background information on the origins of the idiom in question. An updated thematic index makes for easy navigation, and anyone who is interested in the origins and diversity of English vernacular will have hours of fun browsing this fascinating dictionary.

Over 6,000 entries

A landmark contribution to New Zealand English, The Oxford Dictionary of New Zealandisms collects distinctive New Zealand words and usages, drawn from a wide variety of domains and areas of life. Many are shown in actual use by illustrative quotations from written publications. The dictionary’s contents encompass the full range of New Zealandisms, including items both current and disused, contemporary and historical in reference, colloquial and non-colloquial in style, and borrowed and internally sourced in origin.

It is the first title to represent the entire spectrum of New Zealand English vocabulary since the publication of the late Harry Orsman’s monumental Dictionary of New Zealand English in 1997.

‘brilliantly arranged … I recommend it without hesitation to all students of the English language and lovers of literature, as well as to pedants, crossword fanatics and those who like to prove people wrong in argument’ – Auberon Waugh, Sunday Telegraph

Over 2,500 entries

This unique and authoritative dictionary covers the most widely used proverbs in English, using the latest research from Oxford Dictionaries to source them. The new edition adds many sayings that have gained currency in recent years, such as ‘better out than in’ and ‘if you can’t be good, be lucky’. Explanations have been added or expanded for hundreds of proverbs, and examples of usage updated. Dictionary of Proverbs is ideal for browsing.