The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary (CD-ROM)

by Oxford University Press (Author)

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

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.

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Product Details

• CD-ROM
• Publisher: Oxford University Press; Windows CD-ROM edition (August 1997)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0192683020
• ISBN-13: 978-0192683021
• Product Dimensions: 10.4 x 7.6 x 1.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 9.6 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #2,729,713 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

42 of 42 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 (Boulder, CO USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

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.

38 of 38 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Shorter OED, December 21, 1999

By	Richard Flanaman - See all my reviews

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.

14 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Great dictionary, search engine but the hypertext needs work, July 25, 1998

By A Customer

As dictionaries on the computer go, this one is great. Language fans and pedants will love this, as it is easy to browse (next/previous entry keys, for instance), and contains reasonable coverage of usage and history. It has a good range of words, but the Oxford conservatism does show, most markedly in the lack of computer terms.

Unfortunately for those expecting a full hypertext document, no such luck. It is necessary to look up each related word independently, and while some underlined terms are useful hyperlinks, others link to the current page.

Still a great early effort by a company I would not have expected this from.