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Library Journal Review
This 12th edition celebrates the dictionary's centennial with 400 new entries (for a total of 240,000, about the same as the previous edition), 300 new senses (e.g., a new meaning for "tweet"), and numerous 1911-2011 highlight boxes explaining a word's changes since the first edition. High standards for brief, clear definitions are maintained, as are other traditional emphases: current usage, terms from around the world, -technical and scientific terms, and brief etymology statements. As in the previous edition, usage boxes sprinkled throughout clarify many points, such as pronunciation and distinctions between similar terms. The appendixes now appear in the center of the book. Two of them have been removed-"English in Electronic Communication" and "Guide to Good English"-while a table about U.S. states has been added. The pleasing graphic presentation mirrors the 11th edition, with hanging indents from headwords. One improvement is a darker box around the word "Usage" at the top of the gray-scale usage boxes. Unlike the newly released, slightly larger American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th ed. (Houghton Harcourt, 2011), there are no photographs. Both publishers have bundled an online access package for individual (though not institutional) purchasers. BOTTOM LINE This well-researched, current dictionary is highly recommended, especially for those not already owning the 11th edition.-Marianne Orme, Des Plaines P.L., IL (c) Copyright 2011. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
CHOICE Review
This is the 100th anniversary of the Concise Oxford English Dictionary--perhaps sufficient reason for a new edition, though this 12th edition represents only a minimal revision of the previous one (11th ed., ed. by C. Soanes and A. Stevenson, CH, Jan'05, 42-2531). Only 400 new words and 300 new senses have been added. One major change, however, is that this new edition comes with a CD-ROM that includes 50,000 spoken audio pronunciations, plus 12 months of access to Oxford Dictionaries Online (CH, Nov'10, 48-1195). Like all Oxford dictionaries, this one is now based on the common database, the Oxford English Corpus, and the citations database of the Oxford Reading Programme. It includes English as written all over the world, not only in formal contexts but also in blogs and e-mails. Like its predecessors, this edition concentrates on modern English words and manages to pack a lot of punch into its nearly 1,700 pages. It supplies most of the essentials of a definition, including part of speech, pronunciation, definition, information on origin, and guidance on usage level (e.g., "tata" is a "Brit. informal" exclamation meaning "goodbye"). British spelling is given pride of place, and an occasional sense of a word or phrase will be new to American users. Summing Up: Recommended. Lower-level undergraduates and above; general audience. W. Miller Florida Atlantic University
