Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (New Edition)

        For more than a century, the title "dictionary of phrase and fable" has been synonymous with the name "Brewer's." With the publication of this volume, Oxford introduces the first real competition to Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, which appeared in a sixteenth edition in 2000 [RBB O 15 00]. In her introduction to The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, Knowles, managing editor of Oxford Quotation Dictionaries, unabashedly acknowledges her work's indebtedness to the compilations begun by Ebenezer Cobham Brewer in 1870 but notes that the approximately 20,000 entries in Oxford's version have been drawn from Oxford's vast dictionary databases, quotations files, and other resources.
        According to Knowles, the words, names, and phrases featured in this dictionary "justify inclusion by having some figurative or allusive connotation, or by being central to the development of a civilization or culture."

       The Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable includes about 1,500 more entries than the sixteenth edition of Brewer's, which contains 18,500 entries. However, Brewer's makes such extensive use of subentries that the numbers are misleading. A side-by-side comparison of Oxford and Brewer's reveals that although there is considerable overlap between the two, each has a wide variety of unique entries. For example, only Brewer's includes back burner, fight tooth and nail, Gulliver, never say die, and pull out all the stops, while only Oxford has entries for Archie Bunker, Babi Yar, Beanie baby, close but no cigar, and snail mail. In contrast to Oxford, Brewer's always provides explanations for proverbs, and in many other instances, Brewer's entries are fuller.
       Whereas the Oxford entry for horses lists 20 famous steeds and their riders, Brewer's entry identifies more than three times that number, and although both dictionaries explain the expression the full monty, only Brewer's mentions the film by that title.