Product Description

"The New Oxford Dictionary of English" was first published in 1998 and quickly established itself as the foremost single-volume authority on the English language. This is a major new edition, now without the New in the title, but with all the features that brought world-wide acclaim to the first publication. "The Oxford Dictionary of English" is at the forefront of language research, focusing on English as it is used today, informed by the most up-to-date evidence and the latest research from the Oxford English Corpus. The dictionary is unique in that it places the central and most frequent meanings of each word first, followed by secondary and technical senses, slang, idioms, and historical and archaic senses. There are over 500 boxed usage notes, giving guidance on all aspects of the language and backed up by extensive analysis of 100s of millions of words of real English. Featuring 355,000 words, phrases, and definitions, this dictionary offers the most comprehensive coverage of English as it is actually used in the twenty-first century. There is also a brand-new set of appendices, covering topics including countries, heads of state, and chemical elements.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #355472 in Books
• Published on: 2003-08-21
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 2110 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
For many speakers and learners of English, the word "Oxford" spells authority about language. The second edition of the Oxford Dictionary of English is no exception. Any dictionary which comes from Oxford University Press (whose origins lie in the Middle Ages, the foundation of the university and the dawn of printing) tends to be in a different league from its competitors.

Based on the "Oxford English Corpus", language databases, which amount to "hundreds of millions of words of written and spoken English in machine-readable form", this hefty single-volume dictionary has four million words of text. That includes 355,000 words phrases and definitions, 12,000 encyclopaedic entries and 68,000 explanations. The statistics are mind blowing.

Like all good dictionaries it's bang up to date. "Greasy spoon", "data smog" and "WMD" are all here, scrupulously glossed. So, of course are wonderful, old, near-obsolete words like "editrice" and "bouffant". Plenty of proper names get in too. Did you know that a "Queensland blue" is a cattle dog with a dark speckled body as opposed to a "Queensland nut" which is another name for the macadamia nut?

Like other new dictionaries the Oxford Dictionary of English provides boxed usage notes which point up, say, the difference between "pedal" and "peddle" or discuss the vexed old question of whether infinitives may be split. More unusual are the 14 detailed appendices on, for example, English in electronic communications, collective nouns and proof-reading marks. Most useful of all is probably the "Guide to Good English" which manages to be both admirably concise and immaculately clear. --Susan Elkin

Richard Bell, Writing Magazine
""For all its entries, the Oxford has good clear definitions, excellent descriptions of word origins, and plenty of usgae boxes.""

Customer Reviews

Clear layout, accurate definitions, easy to use
Just to clear up any confusion you might have: this is a very different dictionary to the Oxford English Dictionary. This work (the New Oxford Dictionary of English - commonly abbreviated as the NODE) is intended as a reference for contemporary English usage; hence, for instance, it contains a definition for "minger" and defines "they" as both the third person plural and third person non-gender-specific singular pronoun. If you believe that dictionaries should be prescriptive rather than descriptive this will be anathema to you. If, however, you belong to the descriptive camp (or indeed want to understand what your grandchildren are saying) you'll love it.

The dictionary is layed out in 3 columns per page, the columns are about the right width for my taste but if you're used to large 2-column dictionaries you mat find them too small.

A nice touch is the vowel and consonant pronunciation symbol guides; they're repeated in the bottom margin throughout the book, which makes looking them up a lot more convenient than if they were hidden in an appendix. I also like the markers for each letter which are visible from the outside, they make finding the right place from scratch a lot more convenient.

The binding is very good: the dictionary stays open at the page you left it, and the central margins are wide enough that there is no difficulty reading to the edges of the inner columns. The paper is quite thin, as it has to be to fit 2088 pages into a reasonable-sized volume; that said, the pages are nicely opaque and it doesn't feel as though they will be easily torn in normal use.

THE single volume dictionary of English
Precise, comprehensive, meticulous, rich: for extent and scope - the only single volume dictionary of English to own.

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.

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.

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; States of the USA; 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 OED, this volume surely sets a global standard for single volume works. 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 somewhat out of touch with new informal usages and words entering the language.

Would a cyberskiving chav own a dictionary? ; P

Not bad, but not the real thing.
Whilst the massive Oxford English Dictionary is the king of dictionaries, don't be misled into expecting the Oxford brand to be preeminent at the single-volume level. If you need a dictionary in one volume, your first choice should certainly be Chambers. This is particularly true if you have any interest in Scrabble or crosswords, for both of which Chambers, with its wide range of interesting archaic and dialect words, is the definitive work in the UK.

That said, there is nothing especially wrong with this Oxford offering, but you should think hard about whether its gimmicks, like the usage tips that crop up in little boxes, are valuable enough to earn it a place as your second dictionary. You might be better off saving the money towards serious multi-volume work like the Shorter Oxford Dictionary or, for an American dimension, Webster's Third New International Dictionary.