Yup, the U.S. Equivalent of Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable is ...tada... Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable!

Just too good a resource for any English language library to be without. Although J.M. Dillard did a nice one called "American Talk," which has a lot of neat phrases in it.

There are a lot of good slang dictionaries too -- and I'll admit I enjoy "folk etymologies" quite as much as I enjoy the academic ones. I frequently the "folk" got it a lot closer.

Of course, when you watch a lot of imported (on my side of the pond) TV shows and read a lot of imported books, you wind up with an expanded vocabulary. I once told someone that I wasn't about to get my knickers in a twist over a minor problem and she laughed for three days...