This guide is designed to help anyone who wants to know about idioms, including not only what they mean, but also how to use them. It provides an introduction to the most corn only used idioms in British and American English. Each idiom has its own entry with a full-sentence definition. These not only define the idiom but also show it in grammatical contexto further usage information is given in the examples, which have all been based on a corpus. Idioms are clearly labelled to show whether they are common in British or American English and which register or level of language the idiom belongs too When the idiom has any synonyms or near-synonyms these are also shown.