The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language

It's my childhood desire to purchase this product. Through Amazon, it's "Amazingly" fulfilled. It's a "Great dictionary".

Encyclopedic, colorful, comprehensive.

The American Heritage Dictionary (Fourth Edition) contains 10,000 new words and senses and this updated edition features many new words/terms. True to its prescriptive nature, it also serves as a "how-to" guide for language users, with the American Heritage Usage Panel providing guidance on style, grammar, and usage. There are useful Usage Notes which enable users to make decisions as to how and when to use certain words, terms, and expressions. For example, on page 1695, the usage note on "staunch" states that "staunch is more common than stanch as the spelling of the adjective. Stanch is more common than staunch as the spelling of the verb."A major attraction of this edition is the lavish color illustrations (over 4,000) which make this dictionary an aesthetically-pleasing reference tool. There is a revised appendix of Indo-European Roots and a new Appendix of Semitic Roots which will please those who are interested in discovering the connections between words dating back thousands of years.The dictionary also contains quotations, synonyms, word histories, regionalisms, as well as biographical and geographical entries. For example, on page 875, it is noted under "Our Living Language" that the construction known as "perfective I'm" is found in the Chesapeake Bay area, and has been found to be prevalent among the Lumbee Indians of southeastern North Carolina. As a wordsmith and educator, I find these details immensely fascinating!There are Regional Notes which focus on the various regionalisms in American speech according to geographic region. For example, on page 1770, the Regional Note on "tarnation" states, "...The Oxford English Dictionary cites late-18th century examples of tarnation from New England,..."The AHD also claims to provide a thorough investigation of the histories of words, where "authoritative etymologies are fully spelled out". This can be seen under the heading "Word History" for certain words, and the etymologies provided are indeed extensive. The American Heritage Dictionary is more of a prescriptive dictionary, which provides users with definitions and use of words in terms of correct usage. If you're looking for a dictionary that is more descriptive in nature, then I'd recommend  Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition thumb-notched with Win/Mac CD-ROM and Online Subscription .It is a matter of personal preference really. I own both and am extremely pleased as they serve as excellent reference tools, especially for undergrads and graduate students, as well as any user of the English language. Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, 11th Edition thumb-notched with Win/Mac CD-ROM and Online Subscription

I enjoyed this dictionary, it is well done. Unfortunately, the CD does not work with Windows 7.Too bad I cannot access it anymore on my computer, that's a let down.

Who needs a bound, print dictionary these days? You do, and The American Heritage Dictionary makes the case eloquently.The AHD has always had a secret weapon, a special bonus that scholars like myself sought over and above other commonly available dictionaries, and that is still here (and improved). A serious person gets the AHD as opposed to a serviceable competitor because it includes the best Indo-European root dictionary and best etymological dictionary already present in the main volume. Furthermore, instead of merely porting that grand old dame from the 1920's over to the new edition, the editors knew enough to keep it serious, keep it linguistically sound, to update it according to modern scholarship, and to add amazingly helpful (even to those of us who understand the material already) visual displays of language families.These features are not "consumer grade," however, and most users will not care, but they get all of this with their dictionary when they get the AHD instead of a Merriam-Webster or even Oxford (TM) (as opposed, of course, to the great and incomparable OED).For the regular user, though, this edition has made the dictionary intriguing. The fonts are clear, inviting, and work with concise but well considered definitions. The sheer number of illustrations is staggering, and they appear to be never gratuitous. The dictionary does not illustrate for the flashy, but for the lemma that can only be understood by sight. ("A bird, brown with gray streaks" is accurate, but a picture will work wonders, there.) This is a dictionary that is irresistible. One cannot help jumping and ... forgive my saying so ... surfing from concept to concept, term to term.A web based dictionary, and a look-up dictionary, will work for finding the already-known and answering the question well formulated, but it will not feed the mind or open the horizon. I am overjoyed at this volume and very, very pleased to see my old friend, the AHD adapt to and overcome the Internet age's challenges.

I love this dictionary. I have used a previous edition of this dictionary for many years. This fourth edition is very nice and has color pictures in it. Also the entry words are in a neat dark green which enhances the look of the pages. The words in the definitions are pretty small, though, so older people will definitely need their reading glasses. I find the size acceptable though and this small text helps to keep the dictionary down to a fairly reasonable size. The CD-ROM is very nice for computer use and the words and definitions can be enlarged. The whole CD can be loaded on the computer (if you have enough room for this) so that you don't need to keep the CD in the computer which is a real plus over a previous version of the software. The software, on installation, puts little icons in Word, Excel and Internet Explorer so that you can highlight a word in those programs, click on the little icon and get a definition - very handy. But I miss the Word of the Day that a previous version of the software had. Also, you can no longer double click on a word in the definition to get the meaning of that word. You have to use a more laborious left click, hold down left button and drag across the word to highlight the whole word and then click on the lookup tab. Also if you are thinking about getting the downloadable version from the website instead of buying here on Amazon, don't. Avoid the downloaded version that you can directly buy from the company as the audio pronounciations can take up to 20 seconds or longer to hear after you click on the audio icon. With this disk version that comes with the dictionary, if you load the audio to your hard disk, the pronounciations are instantaneous (on my new computer at least). The installation disk says it is compatible with Windows 2000, ME, XP and the MacIntosh OS X operating systems. I have an XP operating system. My Microsoft Office is Office XP with Word 2002, Excel 2002 and I have Internet Explorer 6.0.

What do I mean by a "crossover dictionary?"Well, I have noticed in recent months and years that the CD-ROMs included in dictionaries get an awful lot more use than the dictionaries themselves! I first noticed this with a nifty Thai-English dictionary. The CD version is so much easier to use that it's not even funny. But I looked around my computer and realized that I was doing an awful lot of Google searches for English word definitions, and was not really happy with the results. One example would be the word "flair." I was curious about the word's derivation / etymology, since I was pretty sure there was a French word "flairer" which means "to smell or scent." The on-line dictionaries were no help.Now I have the American Heritage Dictionary on my computer, and it's a LOT more helpful. It's also a lot easier to use than the paper edition, which does weigh 8.2 POUNDS! :-) Note that the CD includes a couple of small freebies (!) --- a big huge thesaurus, and the complete Indo-European dictionary. The words all come with etymologies, and by gum there is that French verb "flairer," as I suspected.Well worth looking at!! Well worth buying!!One note: on my system, which has a lot of free space, the CD install took over 30 minutes. I guess that this is the fault of some really dumb copy algorithm in the installer, but still --- be aware.