A concise version of the dictionary of phrase and fable originally put together in 1870 by Dr Ebenezer Cobham Brewer. The majority of entries provide the history of phrases or outline the significance of historic terms in religion, magic, philosophy, literature, geography, mathematics and the sciences. The dictionary also includes a miscellany of knowledge: the traditional cries of animal; lists of dwarfs and giants in myth and history, of patron saints, and of wedding anniversaries; a glossary of terms in heraldry; and an account of how to play nine men's morris.