Product Description The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is a treasure of words and information, the one dictionary "no writer, and no serious reader, can afford to live without," according to Pulitzer Prize-winning author Annie Dillard. "The publication of the New Shorter OED is among the major events of the last half-century," enthused the Chicago Tribune. And noted scholar Harold Bloom wrote that the Shorter, "in its immense reach and profound wealth, has no rival for utility and potential enlightenment." With half a million definitions, and over 7.5 million words, the Shorter is surpassed only by the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary for the depth and breadth of its scholarship. Now the vast resources of this acclaimed reference are available at the touch of a fingertip, with The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD ROM. From literary English to street slang, historical to contemporary vocabulary, scientific to legal terms, the Shorter covers the entire English language in all its complex diversity as it is written and spoken around the world. This superb electronic edition allows users to explore the Shorter and the vast amounts of information it contains in ways that were previously unimaginable. Indeed, its powerful search and retrieval machines will let you explore the dictionary in a staggering number of ways, and it locates the information you seek within seconds. Questions which would have taken ages to answer using the printed edition can now be answered almost instantaneously, from simple single word definitions to complex searches. For example, you can find all North American nouns first used in the 18th century (including cuspidor and chowder). You can pick out quotations by Anthony Burgess which contain the word love (there are three). You can locate every headword which became obsolete in the mid-sixteenth century (a list which includes ey, ofhungered, and terve). Or you can search the text of the definitions, enabling you to find the word which means "rain on a cloudless day," or the name of the tree under which Buddha received enlightenment (the bo tree). Or, with a click of the mouse, a reader can look up a quick definition using an easy keyword search, and then cross-reference to related words or look up any word within the text of a definition. Finally, a special rhyming index and an anagram solver make this the ultimate reference for crossword enthusiasts, Scrabble players, limerick writers, and word buffs of all kinds. The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is the world's best unabridged dictionary of English. Whether you use it for scholarly research, as a detailed reference work, or purely for enjoyment, this new CD ROM edition allows you to explore this wealth of information in ways you never imagined possible, and at a convenient and affordable price. Amazon.com Review In hardcover it takes up two thick volumes, but on CD-ROM you get the same 7.5 million words of text (with half a million definitions and 83,000 quotations) on a thin compact disc. The computerized New SOED is a great pleasure. It readily accomplishes the simple task of looking up a word, providing definition, usage, and simple etymology. But the program also searches by anagram and by rhyme, by quotation and by etymology. Perusing the headword group is like flipping the pages. In this fashion, I ran across "nesh" (soft--in consistency, mind, or morals), "convell" (refute completely) and "xoanon" (primitive carved statue of a deity). My Scrabble game is getting less nesh all the time. --Stephanie Gold From Library Journal The contents of this disc match that of its print counterpart of the same name (edited by Lesley Brown, 1997). Having said that, it's hard to believe this is a "shorter" dictionary: there are 7.5 million words on the disc, 500,000 definitions, and 83,000 quotations to illustrate meanings in context. You can approach these words in four ways: simple search (type in your word f