The New Oxford Dictionary of English

This is called the New Oxford Dictionary of English because it represents a new departure from the traditional Oxford approach. The book was largely written from scratch rather than being derived from previous Oxford dictionaries, and concentrates on the current core meanings of words and the relationship of other senses to this core, rather than a historical approach. There are no illustrations, but it follows its rivals in the big one-volume market by including encyclopaedic material on people and places. Thus "smolder", (the American spelling of "smoulder") is followed by: Smolensk ... a city in western European Russia, on the River Dnieper close to the border with Belarus; pop.346,000 (1990). Smollett ... Tobias (George) (1721-71), Scottish novelist. His humorous and fast-moving picaresque novels include The Adventures of Roderick Random (1748) and The Adventures of Peregrine Pickle (1751). The editors have made the text as user-friendly as they could, using as natural a style of language as possible in the definitions. The way words are used figuratively or in phrases is made particularly clear, with generous illustrative quotations and notes on usage. Even the etymologies are explained in flowing, jargon-free language, showing how a word developed from its original meaning to its current sense. The text has been printed in three columns, which some readers might not like, but this does mean that the printers have been able to leave slightly more space between each line than their rivals, making it probably the most readable dictionary of its size. --Julia Cresswell