The American Heritage Dictionary Of The English Language

INTRODUCTION A lmost a quarter of a century ago a new dictionary bearing the name American Heritage appeared. That book was notable because it did four things and it did them well. It faithfully recorded the language in easily understood definitions. It provided guidance toward accuracy, precision, and grace in the use of English that intelligent people need and seek in a dictionary. It traced, whenever possible, the development of English words to their origins and keyed many to an Appendix of Indo-European Roots. And it presented complex lexical data in a typographically attractive design accented by thousands of photographs and line drawings in spacious margins. The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edition, builds upon this distinguished, innovative foundation. The pages of the Third Edition, a lexicon of more than 200,000 boldface forms, hundreds of thousands of meanings, and nearly 4,000 pieces of art, reflect the rich and varied texture of American English as it has been used over time by a broad group of educated speakers. This Dictionary is the product of four years of work by 175 contributors. In preparing the Dictionary, our editors have had access to a database containing hundreds of millions of lines of text that could be searched for any word in context. The A-Z vocabulary, containing more than 16,000 words and meanings new to this Edition, is a comprehensive, detailed record of the language. Use of citations allowed the editors to identify new words and new meanings, identify levels of usage, and select more than 4,000 quoted illustrations from nearly 2,000 sources for use in exemplifying entry words in printed context. The quoted illustrations ra