The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (Hardcover)

~ Editors of the American Heritage Dictionaries (Editor)

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The latest edition of the American Heritage Dictionary is out, and that's hot news--not just for the resolute followers of lexicographical minutiae, but for the general reading and writing public as well. Why? Because the American Heritage is a long-standing favorite family dictionary (never underestimate the value of pictures) and one of the prime dictionary references for magazines, newspapers, and dot.com content providers. For scads of writers and editors across the U.S., it sets the standard on matters of style and lexicographical authority.

So this new edition is exciting and noteworthy, but how good is it? In its favor, the fourth edition is as current a dictionary as you can get. It's six years fresher than the 1994 version, with 10,000 words and definitions you won't find in the still venerable but now slightly dated third edition. For example, unlike its predecessor (and also unlike the 1996 Oxford Encyclopedic English Dictionary), this fourth edition covers dot-com, e-commerce, and soccer mom, Ebonics, Viagra, and a surf definition for cruising television channels and the Internet.

Its panel of special consultants includes authorities on anthropology, architecture, cinema, and law, plus military science, music, religion, and sports, and that is reflected in an impressively comprehensive coverage of the arts, culture, and technology. Sadly, however, there are no medical consultants on the panel, and that loss is felt in some substandard medical definitions. Other flaws: there's a greater than usual tendency to define a word with a form of the same word--for example, fuzzy, whose first two definitions are "1. covered with fuzz." and "2. of or resembling fuzz." And some definitions seem needlessly wordy, such as the entry for furious, which is "full of or characterized by extreme anger; raging." Compare that with the more succinct Oxford Encyclopedic entry: "1. extremely angry. 2. full of fury."

On the other hand, there are valuable entries throughout the dictionary supplying additional information on synonyms, usage, or word history, and these extras, such as the history of diatribe and the usage notes on discomfit, are interesting. The layout is easy on the eyes, with dark blue/green bold type setting the words apart from their definitions, and 4,000 color photographs, maps, and illustrations that are both useful and delightful. On one page, the margin provides color depictions of Francis Bacon, bacterium, and a Bactrian camel. Theodore Roosevelt and a rooster share another margin, while a third page offers Isak Dinesen, a dingo, and dinoflagellate. It is a fascinating book to peruse, and a compellingly scholarly addition to the American Heritage Dictionary line. --Stephanie Gold

From Booklist

Ever since the furor in the U.S. that greeted Webster's Third New International Dictionary (1961) faded, it has become a given that dictionaries should be descriptive rather than prescriptive, a principle sanctified in Britain in the 1850s in Herbert Coleridge's original plan for the monumental project that eventually produced the Oxford English Dictionary. That dictionaries grow by gradual accretion of new words and new senses characterizes the latest edition of the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD), even if it, more than any other contemporary English-language dictionary, flirts with prescriptiveness in some of its usage notes.Reflecting trends in society since publication of the third edition (1992), the most visible additions to the lexicon come from technology. Hence AHD now includes the sense of dot as a synonym for period in computer jargon; a new techie sense for geek; and new entries for dot-com, e-commerce, HTML, HTTP, and URL. These are but a few of the 10,000 new senses or terms incorporated into this edition. Others (e.g., goth, personal watercraft, transgendered) come from the fields of pop culture, entertainment, sports, and business, to name a few.AHD shows two other, much more visible signs of its times. First, the thumbnail marginal illustrations have been transformed from black-and-white to color. This increases their clarity, their utility, and the value they add to definitions. Second, it comes in both print and CD-ROM formats.The CD-ROM (for Windows 95 through 2000 and NT and available for $24.95 if purchased alone) offers content almost identical to that of the print volume and many added features. Some of the illustrations in the print edition are absent from the CD (e.g., mackinaw). This is a small sacrifice for the far greater gains, one of which relates to illustrations. A search feature allows users to display only those terms that contain illustrations, and when any of these is displayed, its thumbnail illustration can be enlarged, offering even greater clarity than the color thumbnails on paper.Other features of the CD-ROM make it an attractive alternative to print, especially for personal use in situations in which it can reside more or less permanently on a PC's CD-ROM drive. A running list of entries in a frame to the left of the display window provides, with much greater precision than the printed dictionary's thumb indexing, quick access to a letter's section. In addition to the word search and A-Z scrolling display of all entries in that left-side window, the window's contents can be limited to display usage notes (usage, synonym, word histories, regional notes), Indo-European roots, Semitic roots, or (as noted) entries containing images. Most entries on the CD-ROM also include an audio icon that, when clicked, plays the word's pronunciation in an audible voice (for some words that of a male, for others that of a female). Just as the Webster's Tenth Collegiate Dictionary allows a toolbar link from Microsoft Word to the dictionary's contents, AHD provides this linkage through a right-mouse click.One other feature demonstrates the dictionary's sense of its times in the age of Internet filters and Dr. Laura controversies: when loading the CD-ROM, the user is asked whether to load the dictionary to include or exclude access to "vulgar" words. This is a latter-day sign of AHD's long willingness to apply usage labels more freely than most of its competitors. Taken by themselves, its usage labels (e.g., "slang," "vulgar") unquestionably appear to be prescriptive. However, when viewed in the context of the dictionary's usage notes, they soften and take on nuance. The usage notes depend heavily upon a large panel of writers and commentators representing diverse views. (What other group can claim both Harold Bloom and Roy Blount Jr and both Antonin Scalia and David Sedaris as members?) The notes convey the panel's uncertainties, disagreements, and qualifiers about how the words are and ought to be used. On the whole, AHD takes an old, inherently prescriptive dictionary device and uses it to describe the majority and minority opinions of a group of facile users of the language. A new category of notes, "Our Living Language," explains how language changes, for example, the reasons why the Ocracoke Island brogue is fading and the attempts to come up with euphemisms for the euphemism downsize. Approximately 1,800 notes of various sorts provide more context and more description than mere labels.When it comes to the things that users turn to a dictionary for most often--definitions, confirmation of spelling, pronunciation--AHD delivers as well as any other respected, respectable desk dictionary. Its definitions are clear and succinct, and they differentiate among senses of a word. Illustrations of words in sentences enhance selected definitions. A pronunciation key on every two-page spread of the print version is the next best thing to the audio on the CD-ROM.AHD long ago established itself as one of the standard American English dictionaries. Its improvements through expansion, refinement, and extension to the CD-ROM medium ensure its vitality and its value to a broad audience, from junior high on. RBB
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 2076 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Thumb Indexed edition (September 14, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395825172
• ISBN-13: 978-0395825174
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.6 x 2.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (76 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #213,549 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

170 of 188 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Buyer Beware: The Handsome Book is Flawed!, December 19, 2000

By	Laure-Madeleine (NYC) - See all my reviews

After using "The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language" (4th ed.) on a daily basis for three weeks, I have discovered that there is a potential defect in it that prospective buyers need beware. The paper used for the pages of this dictionary is very thin, almost like tissue paper. When I turn pages in searching for a word, the bottoms of the pages become very easily chipped (small tears occur). I am very concerned that my new dictionary will become shredded within a few months. I have not had this problem with the same dictionary in the third edition; my copy is several years old. (Publisher please take note and use better paper in subsequent printings.)

I still recommend "The AHD" (4th ed.) as a very good reference dictionary, but if one plans to use it a lot as I do, then "handle with care."

45 of 46 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars from a lexicographer, October 14, 2005

By	Margaret Magnus (Francestown, NH USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: The American Heritage Dictionary: Fourth Edition (21st Century Reference) (Paperback)

I'm a lexicographer and computational linguist by profession -- I have very nearly read this book (and a couple others) cover to cover. I just have to say that AH is a superior dictionary for everyday use.

I work for companies that maintain online dictionaries, and am, among other things responsible for comparing the contents of these lists with the latest published dictionaries to ascertain which entries should be deleted and which new ones included. I find that AH very rarely has bad judgement with respect to selection of entries.

Perhaps the reason another reviewer didn't find Carl Gauss or Reimann is because their names are actually Karl Gauss and Riemann. And I appreciate the fact that AH has gone a long way toward rectifying the perception conveyed by most older biographical dictionaries that all great people have been white, European and male. We need Gauss in there of couse, but we also need Robeson and St. Vincent Millay who won a Pulitzer Prize just like Frost, and who wrote just as beautifully.

Its goal obviously is to both be a desktop dictionary in a single volume, and yet include the words that educated American speakers are likely to encounter in modern, non-technical publications. (And yes, it is an American dictionary, which is why colour is defined as 'Chiefly British, variant of color'.) This objective becomes harder and harder to achieve as the base of English-speaking people expands, and the Internet makes so many more things available to the average reader. The average person may use words like 'alacrity' less often than they did 200 years ago, but in point of fact, the average person's active vocabulary is expanding.

I prefer the way they organize their word senses to what Webster does. (I never compare things to the OED, because that is a work of art, deserving of veneration.) It reserves entirely new entries for an entirely unrelated sense. AH will give iris(flower) and iris(of the eye) two different senses, but Webster's gives (though not entirely consistently) the nominal and verbal senses of, say, 'claim' entirely different entries. AH includes them under the same entry, because they are semantically very closely related.

The etymological Appendix of AH is also kind of famous among linguists. They have very nicely systematized and cross-referenced their entries against their hypothesized Indo-European roots. It's quite well researched, and also a lot of fun.

120 of 133 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Don't Judge a Book By It's Color, January 17, 2001

By A Customer

Whether the Fourth Edition of The American Heritage Dictionary is an improvement over the Third Edition is questionable. The most obvious difference between them is the application of color to the thumbnail illustrations which embellish the outside margins of the page. The application of color may be a smart marketing move, but it enhances the least important aspect of the work. The improvement is marginal, since the detail of these miniatures tends to suffer. After using the 4th edition for awhile, I found that I favored the monochrome pictures of the 3rd edition.

The 4th edition is a good dictionary, and no doubt admirably reflects the rapid change and growth of the lexicon. My complaint is with the perception that the publishers encourage, that this oversized reference is more comprehensive than the leading standard sized college dictionaries on the market. I am not able to claim, that Merriam-Webster's Collegiate (as one example) is more comprehensive that the Heritage. Such a determination is beyond me. However, I have calculated the amount of text contained in these two works, per line, per page, and total. Surprisingly, the smaller Merriam-Webster contains a comparable number of words of text over all.

The art of dictionary making is primarily one of including as many entries, definitions, etymologies, and other essential information about words, as possible within the limitations of the printed work. Heritage takes the way of least resistance by simply making the book larger, much larger, and filling the space with eye candy, and removing most of the intimidating abbreviations. The folks at Merriam-Webster have chosen the more traditional way. Theirs is the more disciplined and painstaking approach of condensing information through the judicious use of page space, typography, and reasonable abbreviations, with the objective of presenting the reader with more substantive and scholarly lexicographical information. The standard edition of the Merriam-Webster Collegiate is about half the size and weight of the Heritage, and costs significantly less. The Collegiate is printed on paper with more body, and with pages sized right for easy turning, making that book easier to handle on a day-to-day basis. Finally, because the Collegiate seems to offer more lexical information on each word listed, and seems to list as many words as the Heritage, it behooves the buyer to consider carefully what he or she wants and needs in a dictionary, before making a purchase.

A serious student of the language, a frequent writer, a person who often needs to take the dictionary along with him, and anyone who just wants an inexpensive yet sturdy and reliable one-source reference work of impeccable scholarship may find that such works as Webster's New World College Dictionary, Merriam-Webster's Collegiate, and even the Heritage's own college edition may suit their needs better than the full sized Heritage Fourth. On careful examination, a wary buyer will find that these alternative references are quite on a par with the Heritage, except for type size and the pretty, but frustratingly tiny illustrations. While older stay-at-homes may find the larger format an advantage, others may find the opposite. My handsome Heritage 3rd Edition is still like new, collecting dust on the shelf across the room, while my standard college desk dictionary is now a well used reference book, taking up little space on my desk at home and at work.