The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition : Print and CD-ROM Edition [Hardcover]

Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0618082301 | ISBN-13: 978-0618082308 | Publication Date: September 14, 2000 | Edition: Fourth Edition

Discover the richness of the English language in ways you never have before, with The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, available in a book and CD-ROM package.

The all-new, full color Fourth Edition includes:

· over 10,000 new words and senses · 4,000 photographs, illustrations, and maps · full etymologies · a revised Appendix of Indo-European Roots · an all-new Appendix of Semitic Roots · over 450 new and revised Usage Notes · 100 Regional Notes · a new Note feature: Our Living Language

The CD-ROM combines the innovation of the Fourth Edition print dictionary with the ease and accessibility of an electronic format. Features of the CD-ROM include:

· Over 1,000 color photographs, illustrations, and maps from the print edition

· Nearly 70,000 spoken pronunciations

· Definitions and usage information can be obtained instantly by highlighting and right-clicking on words in any Microsoft Office application

· A simple search feature finds the word you want, even if you don't know how to spell it

· Separately searchable indexes of all images and note features

The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language will meet all your dictionary needs-whether at work, at school, or at home.

Minimal System Requirements

· PC with Pentium® 200 or higher processor · Windows® 95, Windows® 98, Windows NT®, or Windows® 2000 · 32 megabytes of RAM · Hard disk with at least 20 megabytes of free space · CD-ROM drive (or DVD-ROM drive) · Multimedia system with Microsoft Media Player for sound · SVGA 800 x 600 or higher resolution monitor · Mouse and Keyboard

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

The Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries and of other reference titles published by Houghton Mifflin Company are trained lexicographers with a varied array of interests and expertise. Most of the editors hold graduate degrees and have studied at least one foreign language. Several have degrees in linguistics or in the history of the English language. Others have degrees in science or sometimes other disciplines. All the editors familiarize themselves with the vocabulary in specific subject areas, collect materials on new developments and usage, and work in association with consultants to ensure that the content of our publications is as accurate and as up-to-date as possible.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 2116 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Fourth Edition edition (September 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0618082301
• ISBN-13: 978-0618082308
• Product Dimensions: 11.3 x 9 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (18 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #465,562 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

60 of 62 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars The book is great. The CD needs improvement, August 21, 2001

By 

Electronic Dictionary Lover (Michigan, USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition : Print and CD-ROM Edition (Hardcover)

The hard cover dictionary is first class. But the CD for this 4th edition just can't compare to the 3rd edition CD. Why did the developers of this edition change the user interface of the previous edition is mind boggling. First, we have a large static banner across the top of the screen with no specific usefulness. If you want a splash screen, do it at the start of the program, like that of the 3rd edition. I can't reduce the size of this banner even if I reduce the size of the whole screen frame. Second, I can't choose to NOT have the MS Word right click feature installed. Whereas it will ask me if I want to install any vulgar words definitions. Being a dictionary, I want every definition of words to be included. Third, limited search capability. Again, the 3rd edition of this CD is much better in this department. Finally, how do I modify this CD so that I can use the user interface of my 3rd edition with the contents of the 4th edition CD? I think my 3rd edition CD is a keeper for awhile. Until a revision of this CD user interface or the publish of the 5th edition?

97 of 106 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Insider's point of view...(CD Rom Version), October 18, 2000

By 

Vitaly Zolotusky (Acton, MA USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition : Print and CD-ROM Edition (Hardcover)

I work for Kanda Software and I am one of the developers of this CD. I would like to explain what the issues are that have caused one of our users some concern.

Overwriting DLL files is a common event when one installs a new Windows program. The new program contains the latest Windows DLLs and in fact you want these new DLL files on your machine so it's good to agree to the overwriting.

The DLLs installed with our CD are not a replacement for Microsoft DLLs. They are new DLLs from Microsoft with their changes and fixes. I would not recommend keeping all Windows 95 DLLs from 1995; after all we've gotten quite a few patches and service packs since then.

If you still want to keep your old files, you can do that and most likely you would not have any problems. As we see Paulibus did keep his old DLLs and it did not affect the installation.

On the other issue, a user can accept the changes to the global template of Word made by the installation of the CD and the message will not ask you about this particular instance of change again.

This question is asked because AHD4 is integrated with a number of Microsoft Office programs. For example, if you want to look up a word or phrase in the MS Word document you are reading, you can select the phrase and click on the right mouse button. One of the options in the menu would be the American Heritage Dictionary. If you click on this item, the dictionary would come up with the definition you requested.

If you do not like/need this feature, you can remove integration with MS Word by removing the file AHD4Lookup.dot from the Word Startup directory and remove integration with MS Excel by removing the file AHD4Lookup.xla from the Excel XLStart directory.

A few other questions have been raised by another user.

Note that the Learning Company's AHD3 CD without a CD in the drive does not show images or play sound, which are the big users of space.

When running from the hard drive, the AHD4 CD does take less than 1 sec. to get the definition on any of the machines on which we have it installed (PII-450; AMD K2-300; PII-500).

Page Up/Down does work in the word list. Just tab to the list and you can use whatever keyboard controls you want.

It was never intended to use word list scrolling to look for a word in the lengthy list of words provided. Just type the first letter and you are there.

We should add that the Help information is

Email: [e-mail]

Phone number: 617-351-3836 9:00pm - 5:00pm, Monday - Friday, Eastern Standard Time

Mailing Address: Houghton Mifflin Company 222 Berkeley Street Boston, MA 02116-3764

Attention: Electronic Reference Publishing, 8th FL

Also in Help you can find out how to install the dictionary application on your hard drive.

Finally this is a PC product only. We are working on a way to provide the dictionary to Mac users.

34 of 34 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars AHD 4th Ed. CD-ROM Functionally Limited, January 9, 2001

By 

A Customer - See all my reviews

This review is from: The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition : Print and CD-ROM Edition (Hardcover)

I was eagerly anticipating the release of the American Heritage Dictionary fourth edition on CD-ROM, but unfortunately my general impression upon using this new version is that of disappointment rather than excitement. Positively, the AHD fourth edition on CD (AHD4) contains a wealth of definitions, images, and the full complement of AHD usage notes found in the print edition. AHD4 even reproduces the articles from the print dictionary. But I think unless one is a philologist, most of these articles will probably be only of marginal interest.

Unfortunately, the list of negatives is longer. For one, the AHD4 interface is rather awkward and unconventional. For instance, the AHD logo gratuitously occupies approximately 30 percent of the AHD4 interface. And you cannot minimize, resize, or otherwise eliminate the logo. Second, AHD4 offers a sparse feature set. Unlike previous versions of the AHD software, AHD4 sadly eliminates the thesaurus feature. The search functions of AHD4 are limited as well. Yes, it will help you to locate words that you aren't certain how to spell, and it does allow wild card searches for individual words. But those are largely the extent of its search functions: no logical search functions are offered. There is a search option for images and searches for various kinds of usage notes, but this involves clicking on a menu item to bring up a list of all the dictionary entries containing the searched for item type and scrolling to find the entry you want. I also found it particularly inconvenient that I could not search AHD4's database of definitions: The lack of this kind of search function in a computer dictionary seems to me egregious. I also found it irksome that I could not double-click or right-click a word within a definition to look it up. Instead, you have copy it and paste it into AHD4's search box. AHD4 does allow you to right-click a word within Microsoft Word to obtain its definition, which is useful, but on the down side this feature doesn't work in other word processing programs. There is also no way to bookmark particular words. A final complaint is that AHD4's install routine does not offer the option for a full install. You can do a full install (if you search the help file to learn how to do so after you've already installed AHD4), but it's not user-friendly for the novice computer user.

Overall, if you are concerned solely with content, AHD4 is exceptional. However, for me the measure of a software dictionary's excellence is how it enables you to access that content. In terms of its functionality as a software dictionary, I found AHD4 unfortunately only mediocre.