This volume combines three reference works, "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Quotations", "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs" and "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of Word Origins". The dictionary of quotations has been revised and updated, maintaining extensive coverage of literary and historical quotations. It contains over 9000 quotations from nearly 2000 authors; new appendices have been added on Sayings of the Nineties, Slogans and Popular Misquotations, bringing the dictionary fully up to date. A useful keyword index helps the reader to trace quotations and their authors. The dictionary of proverbs covers sayings from "the more the merrier" to "there's no such thing as a free lunch", with over 1000 of the best-known English proverbs from around the world. For this second edition, many new quotations have been added to illustrate the proverbs, and over 100 proverbs are included for the first time.