Product DescriptionThe New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is the most significant dictionary of the decade. Freshly abridged from the acclaimed Second Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, it represents the ultimate authority on contemporary and historical English, next to the OED itself. Incorporating a wealth of newly researched material, it includes all the key features of the OED in just two volumes, making it the top-of-the-range Oxford dictionary for eveyday use. Both current and historical English are covered in its 220,000 entries, including such neologisms as dweeb, sellathon, masculist, and winterim. Its 500,000 definitions are illustrated with 87,000 quotations from 10,000 authors, each showing precisely how a word has been used over the centuries. New `contributors' range from Stephen King to Keri Hulme, Doris Lessing to Seamus Heaney. Each entry provides a wealth of information, including history and meaning, pronunciation, entymology, definitions, varient spellings, irregular inflections, quotations, idiomatic phrases and combinations, and a precise record of a word's use. No other general dictionary can provide access to such a comprehensive account of the English language. * All the key features of the OED in just two volumes * Covers English from 1700 to today * 220,000 entries and over 500,000 definitions * 87,000 illustrative quotations from 10,000 authors * Four million words of text * Thousands of rare words, as well as the very latest vocabulary * Up-to-date pronunciation systems * Generous coverage of English around the worldReview"A writer for print must spell it. A writer for broadcast must pronounce it. As one who writes for both, I have used the 13-volume OED for 25 years and it has always been helpful with both. It is a pleasure now to have the Shorter OED. It is equally helpful and it has an additional virtue -- you canlift it."--David Brinkley, ABC News Broadcaster"American writers need to stay alert to the subtle differences, as well as the overlap, between American English and English English. The Shorter -- with usages from Milton to Tony Hillerman -- promises to be a key resource in this regard. As well, the new dictionary has many of the strengths of itsbig brother. Less arcana, but faster, easier to read."--Frank Conroy, Director, Iowa Writers' Workshop"A landmark contribution that will be of tremendous help to physicians and scientists as well as to humanists and scholars in other fields. It will undoubtedly become a standard and authoritative reference."--Arnold S. Relman, M.D., Professor of Medicine and Social Medicine"It brings the bad news with the good -- all the barbarous new words I don't want to know about, but must. It is "cool" by its own definition: `admirably up to date'."--Gary Wills, Professor of History, Northwestern University and Pulitzer Prize Winning Author (Lincoln at Gettysburg)"How grand to have, at last, these indispensible volumes! No writer, and no serious reader, can afford to live without the Shorter OED. For browsers, it's a goldmine -- and you don't need a magnifying glass."--Annie Dillard, Author of The Living, The Writing Life, and Pulitzer Prize winning Pilgrimat Tinker Creek"Every one who cherishes the English language, its history, meaning, flavor, will rejoice in theNew Shorter Oxford English Dictionary and will turn to it every day for information, for precision and for the endless delights of browsing."--Arthur Schlesinger, Professor of History and Author ofDisuniting of America"This dictionary maintains scholarly standards in recording all words in the language whatever their status might be."--Times Higher Education Supplement"incredible display of lexical riches... the compilation needs no further recommendation from me. It is as considerable a work of scholarship as you will find."--Anthony Burgess, The Observer"This wonderfully successful dictionary provides historians and lawyers unparalleled understa