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This newly updated edition of America’s favorite dictionary features revised biographical and geographical entries as well as up-to-date charts and tables for topics such as world currencies and chemical elements. Among the 500 entries new to this update are Amber Alert, blogosphere, gravitino, halo effect, hawala, lycopene, malware, micropolis, proteome, Qi Gong, SARS, shout-out, speed dating, sudoku, Texas hold’em, text message, and wiki.
The renowned American Heritage® Usage Panel, a group of more than 200 distinguished writers, scholars, and scientists, offers advice on problems of grammar and style; engaging notes explain word histories and clarify differences among synonyms; thousands of quotations and example sentences show words in context; and elegant definitions are enhanced by 4,000 full-color photographs, drawings, and maps, making this one of the most readable dictionaries available anywhere.
This dictionary can also be purchased with a fully loadable Windows® / Mac® CD-ROM that contains the entire text of the updated Fourth Edition, 68,000 audio pronunciations, 1,000 full-color photographs and illustrations, and a college-level thesaurus with more than 260,000 synonyms. The CD-ROM has spell-check capability and can be used in conjunction with any Microsoft® Office application to get definitions at the click of a mouse.
This beautiful new edition contains 2112 pages, but also includes a passkey code for a free download of a Smartphone app that works with iPad/iPhone/iPod or Android platforms. The app (a $24.99 value) puts the entire dictionary at your fingertips anytime, anywhere, making this one of the most comprehensive and useful resources available on a mobile device.
— Catherine Whitlow
Anonymous
Posted July 4, 2009
Purchased the 4th edition to replace an old 2nd edition. Found it just was not as well layed out as the 2nd. Granted there were a lot of up dates in both words and definitons but it greatly lacked in other areas. The second edition include complete sections on weights and scales, geography, etc. These are no longer included in the 4th edition.
3 out of 4 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Book_Woman
Posted June 1, 2010
I Also Recommend:
There are a few great dictionaries available for American English. For me the most outstanding of all are the American Heritage series. The fourth edition of "The American Heritage Dictinary of the English Language" continues their tradition of apt and illuminating definitions--the heart of any dictionary--with gorgeous color illustrations of words, places and people in the wide margins. There is an extensive and useful introduction, with articles on the basics of the English language and another on regional differences in American English. The pronunciation guide is the clearest of any dictionary. The cover does not give the number of entries, only that there are 10,000 new words since the last edition. There are 2074 pages, and a chart of the development of Indo-European languages inside the back cover. This is a lot of book for $60. For only
$15 more, you can get a CD-ROM to put this pearl of great worth on your PC. The only change I would make is the addition of a picture of Charles Darwin on page 462 beneath the photo of Clarence Darrow.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.I agonized over which big dictionary to purchase. I have to say, I am very happy with my choice. The tab set up along the edge is easy to use, and there are pretty pictures as well, if you're into that sort of thing in a dictionary. There are a lot of supplementary resources contained within, along with a number of additional tidbits of information scattered throughout the volume. Obviously, this is the version that I keep at home at my desk, being too large to drag back and forth to school. The small paperback version of this edition is a perfect companion piece for that purpose, though.
1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted January 8, 2001
I was eagerly anticipating the release of the American Heritage Dictionary fourth edition on CD-ROM, but unfortunately my general impression upon using this new version is that of disappointment rather than excitement. Positively, the AHD fourth edition (AHD4) on CD contains a wealth of definitions, images, and the full complement of AHD usage notes found in the print edition. AHD4 also reproduces the articles from the print dictionary. But I think it is fair to say that unless one is a philologist, most of these articles will be only marginally interesting. Unfortunately, the list of negatives is far longer. For one, the AHD4 interface is rather awkward and unconventional. For instance, the AHD logo gratuitously occupies approximately 30 percent of the AHD4 interface. And you can't minimize, resize, or otherwise eliminate the logo. Second, the AHD4 offers a sparse feature set. Unlike previous versions of the AHD software, AHD4 sadly eliminates the thesaurus feature. The search functions of AHD4 are limited as well. Yes, it will help you to locate words that you aren't certain how to spell, and it does allow wild card searches for individual words. But those are largely the extent of its search functions: no logical search functions exist. There is a search option for images and searches for various kinds of usage notes, but this involves clicking on a menu item to bring up all the dictionary entries containing the searched for item type and scrolling through to find the entry you want. I also found it particularly inconvenient that I could not search the AHD4's database of definitions. The lack of this kind of search function in a computer dictionary seems to me a glaring lacuna. I also found it irksome that I could not double-click or right-click a word within a definition to look it up. Instead, you have to drag over it, copy it, and paste it into the search box. There is also no way to bookmark particular words. You can right-click a word within Microsoft Word to obtain its definition, which is useful, but on the down side this feature works only in Word. Overall, insofar as content goes, AHD4 is excellent; but in terms of its functionality as a software dictionary, AHD4 is unfortunately only mediocre.
Was this review helpful? Yes NoThank you for your feedback. Report this reviewThank you, this review has been flagged.Anonymous
Posted November 21, 2000
The key word in the title 'American Heritage Dictionary' is American. This is a parochial and biased work, aimed at the American audience, and cannot be considered a definitve dictionary of the English language for the rest of the English speaking world. For example, it calls 'colour' a variant of 'color' - when in fact the American spelling is the variant. Readers outside the USA may find this focus too narrow. It also attempts to be a mini-encyclopedia, with miniscule biographies of mostly American personalities, illustrations and photographs and little tidbits of general information. This diffuses the work, rather than complements it. What it lacks in etymology and usage, it tries to make up in presentation (4,000 colour images). The result is pretty, but disappointing: it needs more credible content, not glitz. As a dictionary, it lacks the substance and authority of either Oxford or Merriam Webster. On the plus side, it is reasonably 'up to date,' and has some useful appendices. If you collect dictionaries, add it to your shelf as a good secondary source. But I'm afraid we must wait for a new Oxford for a truly definitive dictionary.
0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.
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Posted July 21, 2010
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Overview
This newly updated edition of America’s favorite dictionary features revised biographical and geographical entries as well as up-to-date charts and tables for topics such as world currencies and chemical elements. Among the 500 entries new to this update are Amber Alert, blogosphere, gravitino, halo effect, hawala, lycopene, malware, micropolis, proteome, Qi Gong, SARS, shout-out, speed dating, sudoku, Texas hold’em, text message, and wiki.
The renowned American Heritage® Usage ...