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English Dictionaries
The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots traces over 13,000 words, representing nearly 1,350 basic roots, to their origins in Proto-Indo-European, the prehistoric ancestor of English. The dictionary includes an introductory essay by Dr. Calvert Watkins, explaining how it is possible to reconstruct the words of an ancient and unwritten language and describing what scholars have discovered about Proto-Indo-European culture. Interspersed throughout the body of the dictionary are Language and Culture notes that provide more detailed information on particularly interesting roots and the vocabulary derived from them. The Dictionary of Indo-European Roots is an indispensable resource for anyone interested in the history of English and its place within the Indo-European language family.
A one-of-a-kind reference to the international vocabulary of the humanities
This is an encyclopedic dictionary of close to 400 important philosophical, literary, and political terms and concepts that defy easy--or any--translation from one language and culture to another. Drawn from more than a dozen languages, terms such as Dasein (German), pravda (Russian), saudade (Portuguese), and stato (Italian) are thoroughly examined in all their cross-linguistic and cross-cultural complexities. Spanning the classical, medieval, early modern, modern, and contemporary periods, these are terms that influence thinking across the humanities. The entries, written by more than 150 distinguished scholars, describe the origins and meanings of each term, the history and context of its usage, its translations into other languages, and its use in notable texts. The dictionary also includes essays on the special characteristics of particular languages--English, French, German, Greek, Italian, Portuguese, Russian, and Spanish.
Originally published in French, this one-of-a-kind reference work is now available in English for the first time, with new contributions from Judith Butler, Daniel Heller-Roazen, Ben Kafka, Kevin McLaughlin, Kenneth Reinhard, Stella Sandford, Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, Jane Tylus, Anthony Vidler, Susan Wolfson, Robert J. C. Young, and many more.The result is an invaluable reference for students, scholars, and general readers interested in the multilingual lives of some of our most influential words and ideas.
If the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary is the mother of all dictionaries, the Shorter is its most accomplished offspring. At a fraction of the price, the Shorter offers much of the same content, and provides the same quality of lexical excellence as its parent dictionary.
No other dictionary comes close to the Shorter's range and depth. It offers over 500,000 definitions covering virtually every word or phrase in use in the English language--worldwide--since 1700. Each entry identifies a word's various meanings, origins, part of speech, pronunciation, and presents combinations in which the word is often found as well as cross-references to related words. The Shorter offers a historical and literary approach made famous by the OED, which no competitor can match.
Now with 2,500 new words and meanings based on the ongoing research program of Oxford Dictionaries and the Oxford English Corpus, the Shorter is fresher than ever. Some of the new words included in this edition are; Afrobeat, carbon-neutral, darknet, heaviosity, impactful, knuckle-dragger, nanomaterial, retro-futurist, smoosh, testosteronic, webinar, and thousands more. Also new to this edition is a never-before-published, introductory essay by language commentator David Crystal on the History of English providing stimulating insight into the development of the English language.