Home/Dorm Desk reference, MBA & UNC-Chapel Hill ( )

Now that Andrew Bingham recently died, I took a look at my LT entry and saw that I had not put a review and did not list the other editorial staff. So, I needed to remedy this. And I want to say this dictionary is my favorite of all time. I liked a Barnhart dictionary as a youngster as it showed what were the most common words in English. The American Heritage Dictionary doesn't do any stats won word frequency, but it does much more. The etymologies are great. I knew Latin and French when I bought this decades ago and had an incursion into Spanish. So, I was a word person. What's more there is a glossary on Indo-European roots and discovered now words are related to each other, some surprisingly so. The IE root, bhel (1), has spawned words as different as blanc (white in French - but white in English is kweit derived and Latin has alb), blue, blond, blind, black, fulgent, flame, bleak, blaze and so forth. There are also small articles on usage, dialects, grammar & meaning, and computers in lexicography. ( )

No, I haven't read the whole thing (yet). But I've been faithfully using this dictionary since university days and I love it. The illustrations are perfect. Every time I open it I get lost within its pages for much longer than was needed to look up a particular word. I still have the college edition at home, but at work the full 3rd edition looms over me from the shelf above my desk. ( )

I swiped this from my brother's bookcase many, many moons ago in my mid high school years. :) It's my old friend that still beckons me to behold it now and then, despite my habit of opening a browser and typing 'define ____'. All the thumbnail stickers of 'AB', 'CD' have fallen off. But holding it in my hand still feels like the true authority of the English language - a much better time before the butchering done by texting, endless acronyms, and poorly invented words. A solid must have English dictionary for anyone respectful of the language.

Well, ok - it pressed a few flower petals for me too. ( )

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 includes etymologies and essays on the history of the English language, Indo-European origins, usage, dialects, grammar and meaning, and spelling and pronunciation. ( )