Customer Reviews

Oxford Dictionary of English

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Precise, comprehensive, meticulous, rich: for extent and scope - the only single volume dictionary of English to own (namely, for those seeking a non-American English dictionary (in practice, a non-Merriam-Webster work)).

Editors Catherine Soanes and Angus Stevenson have revised and updated the pioneering work of Judy Pearsall (Editor) and Patrick Hanks (Chief Editor, Current English Dictionaries) who led production of the outstanding `The New Oxford Dictionary of English' in 1998.

This revision builds upon that body of work - adding 3,000 fresh words, senses and phrases. The editors and their team drew upon a new 100 million word Oxford English corpus. As with the 1998 dictionary, it focuses its definitions on current usage.

What gives this indispensable breadth and depth is its layout of core senses and subsenses within each definition and the provision of word history: etymology (word origin) and morphology (word form) as well as reference to development of both sense and form.

This provides a rich reference work that would strengthen anyone's vocabulary and sharpen accuracy of expression.

This edition also adds usage guidance where prudent and includes new Appendices: a very useful `Guide to Good English' and encyclopaedia like information (including: countries and their capitals; weights & measures; punctuation marks; alphabets; the chemical elements; data on the solar system; proofreading marks; Prime Ministers and Presidents; Internet Forum & Chatroom keystroke emoticons :~) and shorthand (`FYI' etc); collective nouns; and even categories of wind forces!).

While it might retain the typical dryness and staidness of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), this volume surely sets a global standard for single volume works (cf. Merriam-Webster). The OED might occasionally omit some shades of meaning in current usage and be slow to take up new words due to its staff being too academic by nature and out of touch.

Surely as a living language flows through everyday life, such dictionaries help fight the mudslides?

Its sibling Thesaurus is equally worthwhile, having also undergone useful revision and improvement.

I would suggest that you wait for the Third Edition, released August 19, 2010. In addition to the 2000 additional words and 200 phrases, it includes a year of online access.

This is the book that settles all word usage discussions in our house! From Scrabble words to writing papers for work and school this is the one dictionary we turn to again and again for the definitive answer to all things vocabulary in nature. An interesting book just to peruse as well...if your into the global use of English words and their meanings. So worth the price for a family dictionary.

This is a great english dictionary. The paid $48 edition includes appendixes. The free one on kindle for pc only includes the dictionary A to Z. I like the encyclopedic information under some entries. On my Kindle 2 there seems to be a formatting error at locations 801955-801964. At the start of appendix 1 countries of the world, some of the data looks messed up. Data for some of the countries is missing while other country data is repeated twice. But it looks correct on my kindle for pc. There are no formatting problems with this on kindle for pc.

This is one of my fevorites" I love this dictionary it helps me a lot" everything that I ever try to search for is inside,It is one of the best dictionary ever.

As a South African who grew up in London this will always be my gold standard. Not sure why I was lucky but I slipped though a time window and ended up with it on my iPhone for free. Now the Kindle version is not available in the USA. Very glad to have it on my iPhone.

Meets expectations but is somewhat outdated eg population stats are year 2000 stats so we expect many recent additions to the language will also be missing. Otherwise easy to use and reasonable value. We have loved the previous version to death so it has retired to the bedroom for those who cheat at crosswords.

I couldn't believe that this dictionary did not even have the word "dey." My home dictionary has the word, why not this dictionary--to which we Kindle users are yoked? This makes me want to make my Kindle a litte less "portable" than it could and shoud be.

Perhaps I am missing something, but I can't get the dictionary on the Kindle Fire to actually find words. Well, it will find words but not the way you would expect. For instance, if you type the search word "help" the kindle will look for every instance of the word help within the text.

Not exactly useful when one is looking up the meanings of words. Insipid and utterly useless.

Oxford Dictonary of English is an excellent dictionary. It tells you about the orgins of words, their meaning in Latin, French and other languages. My desire to learn has increased since I started to use it. Thanks.