Product Description

The Second edition of the Macmillan English Dictionary now contains a wealth of new material, while building on the innovative features that won it two prestigious awards.
The most frequently used 7,500 words in English- the ideal vocabulary size for an advanced learner are printed in red, graded with stars, and explained with extra detail about how you should use them.
The new edition includes;

*Hundreds of news word,
*Many more collocations, synonyms and antonyms
*Extra clearly labelled subject- specific vocabulary
*Multi- page vocabulary building sections on the themes of movement, communication and emotions
*A complete package of unique, carefully researched materials based on a detailed analysis of learners' own writing. Full page writing sections and Get it right boxes help you become a more confident writer in academic and professional situations. This material has been created following a two year collaboration with the Centre for English Corpus Linguistics, led by Professor Sylviane Granger, at the Universite catholique at Louvain in Belgium.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77282 in Books
• Published on: 2007-04-02
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 1872 pages

Customer Reviews

a GREAT but SLOW dictionary
I bought this dictionary a few days ago. I had already purchased its previous version and was therefore not new to it. The printing copy is simply gorgeous to put mildly and contains many eye-catching enhancements that make consulting a real joy. The CD version is also marvellous and has been greatly improved over the former except for one thing: SPEED! I had no problems with speed using version one on my computer. It was reasonably fast and in many cases searching a word was rather immediate. However, version two is painstakingly slow and it takes relatively a long time for letters you are typing to appear on the screen let alone searching for their meanings! I understand that Macmillan has made every effort to make its software more complete and powerful than before but the price of it is a tremendous sluggishness that challenge the patience of most users.

Excellent!
This new edition of the Macmillan Dictionary is probably the best dictionary currently available for Advanced Learners of English as a second language. The wealth of information is amazing and it is a real treat to study English with such an unbelievable reference tool.
I am a big fan of other dictionaries such as Longman and Cobuild which are also quite good but in my opinion the Macmillan is several lengths ahead of them, although I must admit the newly published Longman Exam Dictionary is quite a serious contender and should also be highly recommended.
I happily disagree with Amirshahi, the other reviewer: the cd-rom works very well indeed and is quite fast on my laptop computer(I am still using Windows XP). Perhaps, Amirshahi, you should have specified which operating system you were using.

A well designed dictionary for advanced users...
I regularly recommend this dictionary to my Chinese students, and also keep a copy on my own shelves for reference and guidance from time to time. Particularly useful I find are the word ratings: based on their frequency the most used words are highlighted in red and then given a star rating. These words are carefully explained, and students can quickly discover if an unknown word is definitely worth remembering simply by the colour.

There is also a really useful central section called "Improve Your Writing Skills" that contains a plethora of information considering the theory and practice of writing English. Similarly, there are a couple of smaller sections that include coloured pictures to illustrate useful themed vocabulary on subjects like plants & flowers, sports, animals, vehicles, and parts of a car. The dictionary also features idiomatic expressions, British and American English pron and usage, collocations etc.

I also own the Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, but I definitely prefer the Macmillan. The Oxford is slightly smaller, and I find the layout is dense and cramped, although the explanations are always very thorough. The Macmillan, being slightly oversized, is a pleasure to browse through, and contains occasional (explanatory) cartoons and illustrations to break up the text.

The CD-ROM, containing a dictionary and thesaurus, works fine on my computer. I'm running Windows XP, with a 1.5Ghz processor. The instructions say minimum requirements are Windows 2000, 300Mhz processor and 128MB RAM.