Idiom dictionary
An idiom dictionary is a dictionary or phrase book that lists and explains idioms – distinctive words or phrases having a figurative meaning that goes beyond the original semantics of the words.
Idioms
An idiom is a phrase whose meaning could not be readily deduced from the meaning of its individual words. The word comes from the Greek ἰδίωμα – the distinctive style of a particular person. The traditional example is "kick the bucket" which is normally understood to mean dying. The extent to which a phrase is thought idiomatic is a matter of degree and native speakers of English consider a phrase like "pop the question" to be less idiomatic than "kick the bucket".Dictionary
An idiom dictionary may be a traditional book or expressed in another medium such as a database within software for machine translation. Examples of the genre include Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which explains traditional allusions and proverbs, and Fowler's Modern English Usage, which was conceived as an idiom dictionary following the completion of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary, which itself contained many idioms.Some multilingual dictionaries of idioms are available on-line.
One of them is which is freely accessible.
The main readership and market for idiom dictionaries are deaf people and learners of English as a foreign language. The first major dictionary of idioms in American English was A Dictionary of Idioms for the Deaf; published in 1966 by the American School for the Deaf. Subsequent editions were published under the more general title of A Dictionary of American Idioms.