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CHOICE Review

Despite the title, this work is not confined to ``catch phrases'' (defined by Beale as freestanding, nonsensical phrases with a recognized source), but also includes ``... greetings, toasts, exclamations, exhortations, threats, invitations, jokes and puns, cliches, misquotations, modern proverbs, adages and maxims, euphemisms, and vulgar idioms.'' Its treatment of American phrases is slight, a fact Beale admits: his volume is ``... aimed mainly at British readers.'' This revision of the 1977 edition continues 2,500 of the more than 4,000 original entries unchanged, while 1,200 have been augmented or amended. Nearly 1,800 are new entries, most of which are based on notes that Eric Partridge made before his death in 1979. Beale has greatly enhanced this volume with many more keyword cross-references than were included in the original edition. The print is quite small and liberal use of abbreviations breaks up the flow of the text. While not an essential purchase, this dictionary can be recommended for most reference collections, especially in public libraries.-J. Smith, University of California, San Diego