The Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs

Abstract

The fifth edition of the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs represents the latest stage in Oxford University Press’s coverage of proverbs and reflects the changes that have taken place in the quarter-century since the Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs first appeared. The Concise itself grew out of the monumental Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs, first published in 1935 and substantially revised by F. P. Wilson in 1970. A massive work of historical scholarship, the Oxford Dictionary of English Proverbs cast its net over the corpus of English literature and brought together a rich haul of metaphor, idiom, and proverb from all stages of the language. From the outset, however, the Concise was intended to fulfil a different need from the larger volume, in its focus on contemporary usage and on what the late twentiethcentury English-speaker regarded as a proverb—as John Simpson explains in his Introduction. It is this conception that underlies the present dictionary.