• semantically dissimilar units some of whose components are identical while others desig- nate contiguous notions, e.g.: turn someone’s brain turn someone’s head • semantically dissimilar units some of whose components are identical while others asso- ciate with the same class of things, e.g.: lose one’s head lose one’s mind • phrasal verbs forming structural and semantic oppositions to compound verbs with formally identical component parts represented in re- verse order, e.g.: do something over overdo something • phraseological units some of whose com- ponents are identical while others relate as antonyms, whose imagery may be mistakenly construed as semantically antonymous, e.g.: in deep water in low water • semantically dissimilar phrasal verbs with syn- onymous verbal components and identical prepositions or adverbs, e.g.: come off something go off something • semantically unrelated units of similar struc- ture some of whose notional components may match, whose general phraseological idea may appear similar, e.g.: when the balloon goes up when the eagle flies • semantically unrelated units that may differ in structure and have no components in com- mon, whose general phraseological idea or im- agery may appear similar, e.g.: be dead in the water sleep with the fishes • semantically unrelated units that may differ in structure and have no components in com- mon, whose general phraseological idea or im- agery may appear antonymous, e.g.: carry the torch hide one’s light under a bushel Introduction – 6– ARRANGEMENT OF THE ENTRIES The arrangement of material in the dic- tionary is consistently alphabetical. Each entry highlighting the differences of the units it com- prises is introduced by the heading in bold print that lists alphabetically all units making up the entry. All entries, in turn, are arranged in the dictionary in the alphabetical order of the first phrases of the entry headings. When arranging phraseological units alphabetically the following principles have been observed: • initial articles are disregarded when determin- ing the alphabetical order; • simile phrases introducing comparisons are usually given without their optional initial el- ement as; • in the case of hyphenated compounds the hy- phen is treated as a space and phrases written as separate words, or hyphenated compound words, precede solidly spelled compounds; • many phrases include a variable component indicated by the words his, himself, one, one’s, oneself, someone, someone’s, or something that are taken into account for alphabetical order. While listing phrases in their basic or the most usual form, we use the word someone to refer to somebody other than the subject, and the word one is used where the one is the same person as the subject of the sentence. The words his and himself are used purely conventionally and may refer to both sexes. Each unit treated in the entry is followed by a definition and il- lustrated by authentic examples of usage in the context providing the correct semantic and prag- matic framework. Potentially confusable phrases represented in sample sentences are underlined, sometimes together with words which are not part of the phrase proper but form its immediate lexical surrounding. Where an item has several