English is full of idiomatic expressions—phrases whose meaning is more than the sum of their parts. For example, a shot in the dark means ‘a guess’, while a shot in the arm means ‘a boost’. The origin of each is apparent, but neither entire phrase has very much to do with more literal meanings of shot. Phrasal verbs are expressions such as book in and turn out, consisting of a verb plus a particle. The meaning of a phrasal verb is also often quite idiomatic; for example, the meanings of take off are quite distinct from the meanings of take. This thesaurus includes a rich selection of both kinds of idiomatic expression, and provides synonyms for each. If a word is used as both a noun and a verb, the idiomatic expressions are entered as subentries under the part of speech in which the word is used. Thus, by the book is given under the noun senses of book, while book in is given under the verb senses.