From School Library Journal

YA-How will logophiles settle disputes until the revised OED comes out in 2005? Why, they'll look to this new two-volume revision of the SOED, of course. It is a pleasure to use with its sturdy opaque pages, print large enough to read without a magnifying glass, and ample space between the entries. The editors have included 978,600 headworks with more than 500,000 meanings, covering virtually every word or phrase in use in English since 1700. Quotes (87,000 in all) from a vast array of writers, such as Thomas Jefferson, Joan Didion, Kazuo Ishiguro, and Eudora Welty, add context and nuance to the definitions, and illustrate the incredible flexibility of our mother tongue.

Marya Andreen, R.E. Lee High School, Springfield, VA

Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

This exceptional reference work is the first complete rewriting of the 60-year-old Shorter Oxford English Dictionary . Rather than revise and update that popular dictionary, the editors instead used the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary (1989) as the basis for the text. A team of 16 lexicographers and numerous researchers and advisers led by Brown worked for more than ten years to revise, restructure, update, and abridge that most rich and comprehensive of all English-language dictionaries. The result is a superbly useful and afforable historical dictionary of modern English. It sets out the main meanings and development of words current between 1700 and the 1990s, including those in regular literary or colloquial use, slang and dialect words encountered in literature and the mass media, and scientific and technical terms in common use. Tracing every word back to its first known use, this wide-ranging dictionary contains 500,000 definitions and 87,400 illustrative quotations from such celebrated figures as Ben Franklin, Joan Didion, George Orwell, and Gertrude Stein. It is genuinely international in scope. Unique among abridged dictionaries is its consistent historical/literary approach in displaying the changing meanings of words. This work offers the huge scope and scholarship of its parent, the OED , without the difficulties of a 20-volume set or the nuisance of a magnifying glass and at an affordable price. Highly recommended.

- Paul D'Alessandro, Portland P.L., Me.

Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.