Patrick Hanks is well known as a lexicographer and as the author of several remarkable articles on phraseology, collocations and co-occurrences and on the description of meaning. He was the chief editor, or one of the editors, of several dictionaries, some of which are highly original, particularly in their treatment of polysemy. Many people were hoping that he would eventually develop his views in a book, and this had been 'announced as forthcoming for many years'. 'Some people... had given up hope that it would ever appear' (xv), but now, at last, after a period of preparation of sixteen years (215), what began as a 'disjointed collection of short essays and other fragments' has become 'a coherent text' (xv) of almost 500 pages.