LAS LENGUAS INGLESA Y ESPAÑOLA de Delfín Carbonell

  For "tarred with the same brush" Collins bilingual Dictionary gives us the Spanish "cortado por el mismo patrón." Refrain from looking up the Spanish idiom because it has not been included. Why? The Editor has used multiple teams of "lexicographers" who are not connected. This is a sorry situation because if I wanted to learn how to say "María y Celia están cortadas por el mismo patrón," Collins would be no help. The same with "tar and feather." Do not trust bilingual dictionaries, and double-check, especially if you are using Collins. 

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." The...

Bilingual dictionaries come in two parts, Spanish and English. They should overlap, but they don´t, and that is why I "invented" the unialphabet system: one dictionary with both languages together, making the search easier and the vetting less complicated. For example: I search for "when push comes to shove" in the online Collins Spanis-English dictionary and I get "a la hora de la verdad" which does not appear under "hora" or "verdad". A Spanish speaker would never come across "when push comes to shove" unless chance lends a hand. Check your bilingual dictionary and you will often find discrepancies in the two parts. Spoiler: the different teams of lexicographers are not in touch and don't even know one another.     

  El Diccionario Collins , español-inglés, en la red, cacarea mucho sobre lo estupendo que es, cuando en realidad está plagado de agujeros lingüísticos de difícil arreglo. Una cosa es consultarlo esporádicamente y otra hacerlo constantemente para cerciorarse uno qué reseña. Y es que si la lexicografía monolingüe es complicada de entrada, no les cuento sobre la bilingüe. Para empezar necesitamos una sólida formación en ambos idiomas y no sólo unos conocimientos someros por haber nacido en Inglaterra y tener padre español. Y ese es el fallo del Collins : a los chavales que han compuesto el mamotreto les falta formación académica en ambos idiomas y se nota, se nota mucho porque improvisan por ignorancia, no por maldad. Y como no hay cabeza visible, director responsable, la obra de consulta adolece de seriedad académica. Yo recomiendo que, cuando necesitemos concordancias de un idioma a otro, consultemos varios a la vez, que igual suena la flauta por casualidad.