This highly acclaimed dictionary is newly revised and offers language mavens a unique opportunity to delve into the most up-to-date, contemporary English usage. Comprehensive, easy-to-use, and free of jargon, the 21st Century Dictionary emphasizes the written and spoken English of everyday situations. The perfect reference for any word lover. Special features: Thumb Index. Clear definitions in straightforward English. Up-to-the-minute information on how words are used. Supported by Chambers Wordtrack and The British National Corpus 100 Million word database. Innovative page design gets you to the right information fast. Hundreds of usage notes, word histories, idioms, and help with pronunciation, spelling and grammar.

This is the third English Dictionary which the present Editor has prepared, and he may therefore lay claim to an unusually prolonged apprenticeship to his trade. It is surely unnecessary for him to say that he believes this to be the best book of the three, and he can afford to rest content if the Courteous Reader receive it with the indulgence extended to his Library Dictionary, published in the spring of 1898. It is based upon that work, but will be found to possess many serviceable qualities of its own. It is not much less in content, and its greater relative portability is due to smaller type, to thinner paper, and still more to a rigorous compression and condensation in the definitions, by means of which room has been found for many additional words. The aim has been to include all the common words in literary and conversational English, together with words obsolete save in the pages of Spenser, Shakespeare, Milton, and the Authorised Version of the Bible. An attempt has been made also to include the common terms of the sciences and the arts of life, the vocabulary of sport, those Scotch and provincial words which assert themselves in Burns, Scott, the Brontës, and George Eliot, and even the coinages of word-masters like Carlyle, Browning, and Meredith. Numberless compound idiomatic phrases have also been given a place, in each case under the head of the significant word.