Compiled from the author’s original and painstaking research of nearly three thousand works, dating, as far back as the twelfth century and earlier, and built upon the foundations of the great Oxford English Dictionary, the Wordsworth Dictionary of Proverbs traces the origins and history of English proverbs and proverbial phrases. The author has eschewed the purely sententious and moral, which have little claim to proverbial use, and has codified this notoriously verbal rather than literary from in a way which earned the gratitude of the compilers of the Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs. The proverbs are grouped alphabetically and by subject, with copious cross-references throughout, reading the dictionary as great a joy to consult as it is to browse through.