COLLINS ONLINE DICTIONARIES

I am the type of person who "reads" dictionaries. I check up on a word or expression and, before I know it, one thing leads to another, and two hours have passed! Today I was checking the word "bill" in the online version of Collins Dictionary. I came across the cute expression "sell a bill of goods", to deceive, swindle, or take unfair advantage of someone, which gives the Spanish equivalent of "dar a alguien gato por liebre." Curious as I am, I went straight to "gato" only to find that now "dar a alguien gato por liebre" was not "to sell someone a bill of goods", but "to con someone" or "to have been done." Students of English will never get to the phrase "sell a bill of goods" in Spanish. I am not daunted by the idiosyncrasies of workbooks, so I tried another idiom: "Dársela a alguien con queso" which is similar in meaning. What did I get? "To take someone in." There! I am sure the compilers did not bat an eye! 

The worst part is that I checked the word "albis", which is part of the Latin phrase "in albis" much used in Spanish. Horrors, Collins Dictionary gives us "en albis" as "not to know a thing, not have a clue." And yet, the "example sentences from the Collins Corpus" do write it right" "in albis." Indeed, it is in albis and not en albis as Collins lexicographers (?) would have us think.