1st Edition

Dictionary of European Proverbs

By Emanuel Strauss Copyright 1995

    This Dictionary contains over 50,000 proverbs, in some 70 European languages and dialects, arranged in 2,500 sets. It is the fruits of over 40 years of collection and research, the only collection of proverbs on anything like this scale ever to be published anywhere in the world. Emanuel Strauss has trawled through innumerable collections of proverbs in all languages, from early printed books and rare items to the latest theses and journals, and grouped together many thousands of proverbs in sets of equivalent meaning. Comprehensive indexes for each language provide access to any proverb by way of its key words. A critical bibliography musters some 500 items, from incunabula to the current decade.

    Select contents: include over 70,000 proverbs in 65 European languages, arranged in groups of semantic equivalents. The English proverbs are listed alphabetically and also indexed by some 120,000 keywords in other languages. The text includes Latin origins as well as historical terms.

    Biography

    Emanuel Strauss is a dedicated linguist and amateur paroemiologist who has spent 40 years compiling this extensive collection of proverbs. A polyglot who can read over 20 languages and dialects, he trained at the Jagellonian University of Krakow in his native Poland, and later at Lvov University in the Ukraine. Since then, Strauss has travelled widely in Europe, gathering information for the dictionary along the way.

    'Strauss and his helpers have managed the execution of their polyglot collection magisterially. This is invaluable for the linguistically, synchronically, and comparatively interested proverb scholars (as well as folklorists, oral historians, ethnoologists, and linguists), who will find every individual text by means of the utterly complete index volume. The bookis, however, also of much value and interest to translators who face a special challenge in finding equivalent proverbs in the target language. The three volumes belong thus into every good library, but they should also be a part of the reference work for translators serving the European Community or the United Nations.' - Wolfgang Mieder, University of Vermont