A gift book in a leather cover "Russian winged words. An illustrated dictionary." Moritz Michelson

One likes watermelon, the other likes pork cartilage," Moritz Ilyich Mikhelson wittily characterized domestic readers as usual, distinguishing bored hunters to the plot and denouement from aesthete readers who savor every word. A well-known teacher, translator and linguist of the XIX century, the compiler of a Large explanatory and phraseological dictionary, he, with his characteristic imagery of thinking, appreciated the work of his life as "a real treat for mental gourmets." And indeed, anyone who is "inspired by an intelligent, original or successfully borrowed thought, by the way, a quoted phrase in the form of a saying or proverb, an apt expression, sometimes a separate word", has the right to count on this unique collection of "apt and walking words". Sources of famous Russian and foreign quotations; mythological and historical proper names used allegorically as common names; the etymology of many "winged" words and expressions complete the overall picture, implying an audience of readers of different ages and very different degrees of education…