A dictionary of Confusable Phrases: More Than 10,000 Idioms and Collocations

hide one’s light under a bushel
Introduction
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6 –
A
RRANGEMENT OF THE
E
NTRIES
The arrangement of material in the dic-
tionary is consistently alphabetical. Each entry
highlighting the differences of the units it com-
prises is introduced by the heading in bold print
that lists alphabetically all units making up the
entry. All entries, in turn, are arranged in the
dictionary in the alphabetical order of the first
phrases of the entry headings. When arranging
phraseological units alphabetically the following
principles have been observed:
• initial articles are disregarded when determin-
ing the alphabetical order;
• simile phrases introducing comparisons are
usually given without their optional initial el-
ement as;
• in the case of hyphenated compounds the hy-
phen is treated as a space and phrases written
as separate words, or hyphenated compound
words, precede solidly spelled compounds;
• many phrases include a variable component
indicated by the words his, himself, one, one’s,
oneself, someone, someone’s, or something that
are taken into account for alphabetical order.
While listing phrases in their basic or the
most usual form, we use the word someone to
refer to somebody other than the subject, and
the word one is used where the one is the same
person as the subject of the sentence. The words
his and himself are used purely conventionally
and may refer to both sexes. Each unit treated
in the entry is followed by a definition and il-
lustrated by authentic examples of usage in the
context providing the correct semantic and prag-
matic framework. Potentially confusable phrases
represented in sample sentences are underlined,
sometimes together with words which are not