front cover of Take My Word for It
Take My Word for It
A Dictionary of English Idioms
Anatoly Liberman
University of Minnesota Press, 2022

Three centuries of English idioms—their unusual origins and unexpected interpretations

To pay through the nose. Raining cats and dogs. By hook or by crook. Curry favor. Drink like a fish. Eat crow. We hear such phrases every day, but this book is the first truly all-encompassing etymological guide to both their meanings and origins. Spanning more than three centuries, Take My Word for It is a fascinating, one-of-a-kind window into the surprisingly short history of idioms in English. Widely known for his studies of word origins, Anatoly Liberman explains more than one thousand idioms, both popular and obscure, occurring in both American and British standard English and including many regional expressions.

The origins, and even the precise meaning, of most idioms are often obscure and lost in history. Based on a critical analysis of countless conjectures, with exact, in-depth references (rare in the literature on the subject), Take My Word for It provides not only a large corpus of idiomatic phrases but also a vast bibliography. Detailed indexes and a thesaurus make the content accessible at a glance, and Liberman’s introduction and conclusion add historical dimensions. The result of decades of research by a leading authority, this book is both instructive and absorbing for scholars and general readers, who won’t find another resource as comparable in scope or based on data even remotely as exhaustive.

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They Knew Both Sides of Medicine
Cree Tales of Curing and Cursing Told by Alice Ahenakew
H.C. Wolfart
University of Manitoba Press, 2000
Born in 1912, Alice Ahenakew was brought up in a traditional Cree community in north-central Saskatchewan. As a young woman, she married Andrew Ahenakew, a member of the prominent Saskatchewan family, who later became an Anglican clergyman and a prominent healer. Alice Ahenakew's personal reminiscences include stories of her childhood, courtship and marriage, as well as an account of the 1928 influenza epidemic an encounters with a windigo. The centrepiece of this book is the fascinating account of Andrew Ahenakewís bear vision, through which he received healing powers. Written in original Cree text with a full English translation, They Knew both Sides of Medicine also includes an introduction discussing the historical background of the narrative and its style and rhetorical structure, as well as a complete Cree-English glossary.
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Three Language List of Botanical Name Components
A. Radcliffe-Smith
Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, 2000
Listing Greek and Latin words, roots or elements used or usable in botanical names and epithets, this book has been compiled in order to help authors to avoid mixture of Greek and Latin in new coinages and understand the meanings of Latin and Greek compound-coinages already in literature. Each list is presented alphabetically under Greek, Latin and English headings, together with equivalents in the other two languages. Besides the main list, there is a three-language supplementary list of 1,620 classical plant names and a listing of commonly found numerals.
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front cover of Tohono O'odham/Pima to English, English to Tohono O'odham/Pima Dictionary
Tohono O'odham/Pima to English, English to Tohono O'odham/Pima Dictionary
Dean Saxton, Lucille Saxton, and Susie Enos
University of Arizona Press, 1983
The language of the Tohono O'odham (formerly known as Papago) and Pima Indians is an important subfamily of Uto-Aztecan spoken by some 14,000 people in southern Arizona and northern Sonora. This dictionary is a useful tool for native speakers, linguists, and any outsiders working among those peoples. The second edition has been expanded to more than 5,000 entries and enhanced by a more accessible format. It includes full definitions of all lexical items; taxonomic classification of plants and animals; restrictive labels; a pronunciation guide; an etymology of loan words; and examples of usage for affixes, idioms, combining forms, and other items peculiar to the Tohona O'odham-Pima language. Appendixes contain information on phonology, kinship and cultural terms, the numbering system, time, and the calendar. Maps and charts define the locations of place names, reservations, and the complete language family.
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Tondi Songway Kiini
Reference Grammar and TSK-English-French Dictionary
Jeffrey Heath
CSLI, 2005
Only recently discovered by linguistic scholars, Tondi Songway Kiini (TSK) is a tonal language spoken in the small country of Mali in western Africa. Unlike other Songhay languages, TSK preserves the lexical and grammatical tones of its proto-language and also exhibits unique systems for the expression of focalization and relativization. Tondi Songway Kiini is a valuable overview of the grammar of an African language with a tone system quite different from that of the more familiar Bantu system. It is also an irreplaceable guide to the grammar and meanings of this unusual African language.
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front cover of Tony Hillerman's Navajoland
Tony Hillerman's Navajoland
Hideouts, Haunts, and Havens in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mysteries
Laurance D. Linford
University of Utah Press, 2011

Tony Hillerman is beloved for his novels of intrigue in the American Southwest. In Tony Hillerman’s Navajoland, Laurance Linford takes readers on a journey through the Four Corners region to the haunts of Hillerman’s characters. Offered in encyclopedic form, each entry gives the common name of a particular location, the Navajo name and history, and a description of the location’s significance in various Hillerman novels. An understanding of the Navajo names and their relations to the landscape will lend a new dimension to the characters and events Tony Hillerman created.

This expanded third edition is updated to include all 72 sites from Hillerman’s final and location-rich novel, The Shape Shifter.
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front cover of Tony Hillerman's Navajoland
Tony Hillerman's Navajoland
Hideouts, Haunts, and Havens in the Joe Leaphorn and Jim Chee Mysteries
Laurance D. Linford
University of Utah Press, 2005


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