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Loading... The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Languageby Houghton Mifflin Company
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will love Sign up for LibraryThing to find out whether you'll like this book. In terms of its physical quality this is the best book in my collection. A superb resource for the English languish. Compact enough to be handy, large enough to be authoritative. Heavily illustrated and annotated; it also include etymologies and essays on the history of the English language, Indo-European origins, usage, dialects, grammar and meaning, and spelling and pronunciation. (  ) edwardv | Nov 24, 2009 |  Fabulous book & my most favorite of all; hence it's added to the list. ( ) Amethyst26 | Jul 18, 2009 | Back in 1971 when I was fresh out of college and working at a Boston ad agency, we were launching the first edition of this outstanding dictionary. Since then, and despite the ubiquitous availability of online word-lookups, I have continued to update my AHD to the new edition whenever it's been released. It's partly brand loyalty, but moreso an appreciation for the uniquley entertaining way the dictionary was designed - with color photographs and often humorous references you won't find in Merriam Webster (and I worked on that account, too, in later years). ( ) dreamreader | Mar 26, 2009 | Although I use Merriam-Webster's Collegiate as the reference for my editing class and my own writing, the American Heritage is my favorite dictionary--for its typography and etymology. (  ) KennethWDavis | Sep 6, 2008 | What can one say it is a dictionary. Print is pretty small tough reading unless you have great eyesight. It is the one that I currently use and find it very helpful. ( ) foof2you | Aug 28, 2008 |  no reviews | add a review
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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
(retrieved from Amazon Fri, 24 Apr 2009 07:58:19 -0400)
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