Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable | Infoplease Editors' Blog

Ebenezer Cobham Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is one of the English-speaking world's classic reference books. First published in England in 1870, the volume is now in its 16th edition in the U.S. and in its 17th edition in the UK.

Infoplease recently added Brewer's 1894 "new and enlarged" edition to its site. This was the last version Brewer himself worked on--he died three years after its publication at age 87.

While the actual title of the 1894 edition was the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, future versions of the dictionary began incorporating Brewer's name in the title, in the same way that the title of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (first published in 1855) eventually included its original author's name.

The dictionary, which contains approximately 16,000 entries, is a compendium of allusions, idioms, mythology, place names, historical and fictional figures and events, nicknames, foreign terms, and famous phrases and quotations--what Brewer described as "words that have a tale to tell." Here's a sampling of some of its diverse and colorful entries:

Given that the volume is more than a century old, you'll find its tone and expression musty and antiquated, and its definitions and etymologies frequently obscure and imprecise. But what this idiosyncratic reference work sometimes lacks in scholarly rigor is easily made up for by its wit, charm, and fascinating contents.