Shorter Oxford English Dictionary: Sixth Edition [Hardcover]

William R. Trumble (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 20, 2007 | ISBN-10: 0199233241 | ISBN-13: 978-0199233243 | Edition: 6

The sixth edition of the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is updated, enlarged and enlivened with new words, new definitions, revised illustrative quotations--and a fully customizable CD-ROM.
If the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary is the mother of all dictionaries, the Shorter is its most accomplished offspring. At a fraction of the price, the Shorter offers much of the same content, and provides the same quality of lexical excellence as its parent dictionary.
No other dictionary comes close to the Shorter's range and depth. It offers over 500,000 definitions covering virtually every word or phrase in use in the English language--worldwide--since 1700. Each entry identifies a word's various meanings, origins, part of speech, pronunciation, and presents combinations in which the word is often found as well as cross-references to related words. The Shorter offers a historical and literary approach made famous by the OED, which no competitor can match.
Now with 2,500 new words and meanings based on the ongoing research program of Oxford Dictionaries and the Oxford English Corpus, the Shorter is fresher than ever. Some of the new words included in this edition are; Afrobeat, carbon-neutral, darknet, heaviosity, impactful, knuckle-dragger, nanomaterial, retro-futurist, smoosh, testosteronic, webinar, and thousands more. Also new to this edition is a never-before-published, introductory essay by language commentator David Crystal on the History of English providing stimulating insight into the development of the English language.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In hardcover it takes up two thick volumes, but on CD-ROM you get the same 7.5 million words of text (with half a million definitions and 83,000 quotations) on a thin compact disc. The computerized New SOED is a great pleasure. It readily accomplishes the simple task of looking up a word, providing definition, usage, and simple etymology. But the program also searches by anagram and by rhyme, by quotation and by etymology. Perusing the headword group is like flipping the pages. In this fashion, I ran across "nesh" (soft--in consistency, mind, or morals), "convell" (refute completely) and "xoanon" (primitive carved statue of a deity). My Scrabble game is getting less nesh all the time. --Stephanie Gold --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

The contents of this disc match that of its print counterpart of the same name (edited by Lesley Brown, 1997). Having said that, it's hard to believe this is a "shorter" dictionary: there are 7.5 million words on the disc, 500,000 definitions, and 83,000 quotations to illustrate meanings in context. You can approach these words in four ways: simple search (type in your word for a definition), index search (to look for headwords, derivatives, abbreviations, phrases and compound words, uses and references, and other word forms), full-text search (to search all text, etymological text, definitions, or quotations), and special search (to search for anagrams, rhymes, and phonetics). It may take a bit of hunting under those four groups to find a form-specific search that suits, but how remarkable that Oxford has made it possible within just two levels of looking. Nice features include two wildcards (* and ?) that work at the beginning, end, or middle of words, as well as a link feature that lets you use the dictionary within several word processors such as MS Word for Windows 6 and 7, WordPerfect 6.0 and 6.1, and Ami Pro 3.1. Bottom Line: What's extraordinary about this disc is how well it will serve all types of users, from those with the most casual reference question to the scholarly student of the English language. It is highly recommended for all types of libraries and personal collections.
Copyright 1997 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 3472 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 6 edition (September 20, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0199233241
• ISBN-13: 978-0199233243
• Product Dimensions: 11.8 x 9.9 x 6.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 13.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (74 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #61,841 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #64 in Books > Education & Reference > Dictionaries & Thesauruses > English

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

113 of 116 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars The Print is Just Fine and So Is the App September 25, 2007

By B. Leach

Format:Hardcover

I am an older person (69, wear specs) and have no problem with the print in the sixth edition of this great dictionary. Yes, the print is smaller than that of the fifth edition, but the volume itself is also smaller, less poundage, allowing an (older) arm to lift the darn thing without mechanical help--say, a forklift. No problem at all with the print. One technical note for Mac users regarding the CD-ROM. Tech support at Oxford tells me that a patch is on the way, but as of 25 Sept. 2007 the installed SOED is inoperative on both my iMAC G5 and MacBook. So until that patch arrives I'll just have to use the real thing, not a bad idea anyway. A great dictionary.
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A year later now (October 2008) and I've just installed the update to the application version of this great dictionary. And I'm happy to report that it works well on both an iMac G5 and a new MacBook. Loads fast and word look-ups are instantaneous. Impressive improvements over the original application.

48 of 48 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Shorter OED December 21, 1999

By Richard Flanaman

Format:CD-ROM

A very impressive dictionary - hardly justifies 'shorter'. I have the full unabridged OED on CD at work and bought this version for my own use at home. I've found the shorter version just as good in practice. The search and hyperlinking facilities are good, better than on the full version in mt view and of course even those can't be compared to using the reference on paper, which will surely become a lost art before long. (At a full bookshelf's worth of paper the unabridged OED doesn't even have the usual 'you can read it in the bath' benefit of printed books when compared to CDs - it wouldn't even fit in my bath).

All in all I rate this as the best dictionary available in its price range - in any format.

46 of 46 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars In fact, it does hyperlink every word August 27, 1998

By Christopher Locke

Format:CD-ROM|Amazon Verified Purchase

The previous review complained that headwords had to be entered manually, and I thought so too for about half an hour of playing with the none-too-intuitive interface. But this turns out to be incorrect. If you double-click any word (to highlight it), then mouse on the open-book icon, the entry for that word will be called into the display window. I would have preferred a right-button mouse menu, but I'm glad to have the capability however it's implemented. btw, if there are possible other forms of the word you've selected this way, a menu pops up to let you choose. Nice.

The Windows menu does not include an option to tile the screen (just cascade), plus the app doesn't remember window positions. Annoying, but not a showstopper.

More irritating is not having better access to the quotation sources and authors. But there are plenty of quotes. Also, while I'm picking nits, there is no option to Select All (pretty standard with Win95 apps these days), so you have to mouse select the whole page if that's what you want. Also, no line breaks are preserved when you paste into a text editor, so plan on lots of reformatting if this is something you want to do often. Grabbing single blocks of text is easy however.

I'm glad to have this material readily to hand, so I can easily live with Oxford University Press's obvious lack of skill in the interface department. Also, the screen presentation looks pretty good, so there's that.

I also discovered a Very Cool Thing you can do, which is to copy the CD subdirectories to your hard disk -- if you have the room -- and access the app without needing the compact disc. This improves performance immensely, plus frees your CD drive for something else; Microsoft Bookshelf 98 in my case. Don't laugh -- it's a cool tool too.

If you're a dictionary junkie like me, you'll want to get this one. Not perfect, no, but well worth the price.