This revised and updated second edition of Essential American Idioms defines and explains nearly 1,700 idiomatic expressions of contemporary American English. The entries have been selected with the needs of nonnative speakers of English in mind and represent frequently used phrases of everyday spoken and written American English. Among the special features of this book are the following: each entry has at least two example sentences illustrating how the idiom is used in context in natural American English; and a new Phrase-Finder Index enables users to locate a particular idiom quickly by looking up any of its major words.