| Reviews
The authors offer a good one-stop guide to non-English expressions that occur in English contexts, mostly from Latin but also from French, German, Hebrew, Spanish, and several other languages. Every entry is translated literally, word for word, followed by an idiomatic definition, and often also by a sentence that uses the word or phrase illustratively (although these are sometimes less than informative--e.g., The a baculo argument was unsuccessful"). This book amalgamates two earlier, unpublished efforts, one tentatively titled A Dictionary of Latin Expressions for Lawyers and Men of Letters, the other An English Dictionary of Foreign Expressions for Lawyers, Scholars, Journalists, Etc., whose titles give a good idea of the scope of the present publication. Of the thousands of words and phrases here, a few have migrated so thoroughly into English (e.g., "drama," "marijuana," "matador," "dogma," "toga") that they scarcely require inclusion. For the most part, however, the phrases (e.g. droit d' aubaine , in jure, non remota causa sed proxima spectator) are likely to need explication for most readers who lack knowledge of foreign languages. General and academic collections. |
