The American Heritage Dictionary Fifth Edition

Contains over seventy thousand entries including 1,000 new words and their meanings.

• More than 70,000 entries • Thoroughly revised and updated • 2,500 new words and meanings • More than 400 photographs and illustrations • Expert guidance on correct usage YOU ARE YOUR WORDS The words you use define you. Make the most of them with The American Heritage® Dictionary. THE FIFTH EDITION FEATURES Clear definitions written in a style that is accurate and easy to understand New words and senses in all areas from science and technology to food and clothing Biographical and geographical entries that identify the people and places you need to know Useful illustrations that enhance the definitions and make learning easier Expert guidance on usage based on surveys of the American Heritage® Usage Panel Etymologies, synonyms, antonyms, and much more

Based on the authoritative American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, the Office Edition has been completely updated; every single entry has been reviewed and revised as necessary. Its thousands of new words and senses, such as antiquark, earbud, and the verb sense of friend, reflect recent developments in the sciences, technology, and popular culture. Hundreds of photographs and drawings enhance the text, and several tables such as the periodic table of the elements and a table of units of measurement provide helpful data in a useful visual format. Forming the heart of the dictionary, however, are its more than 70,000 entry words, whose clear, straightforward definitions--supplemented by pronunciations, inflections of irregular verbs and plural nouns, and selected etymologies--make the Office Edition of the American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition, an essential reference for the office, school, or home.

"10 years in the making -- 10,000 new words and senses -- over 4,000 full-color images"--Cover sleeve.

Harryette Mullen's fifth poetry collection, Sleeping with the Dictionary, is the abecedarian offspring of her collaboration with two of the poet's most seductive writing partners, Roget's Thesaurus and The American Heritage Dictionary. In her ménage à trois with these faithful companions, the poet is aware that while Roget seems obsessed with categories and hierarchies, the American Heritage, whatever its faults, was compiled with the assistance of a democratic usage panel that included black poets Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, as well as feminist author and editor Gloria Steinem. With its arbitrary yet determinant alphabetical arrangement, its gleeful pursuit of the ludic pleasure of word games (acrostic, anagram, homophone, parody, pun), as well as its reflections on the politics of language and dialect, Mullen's work is serious play. A number of the poems are inspired or influenced by a technique of the international literary avant-garde group Oulipo, a dictionary game called S+7 or N+7. This method of textual transformation--which is used to compose nonsensical travesties reminiscent of Lewis Carroll's "Jabberwocky"--also creates a kind of automatic poetic discourse. Mullen's parodies reconceive the African American's relation to the English language and Anglophone writing, through textual reproduction, recombining the genetic structure of texts from the Shakespearean sonnet and the fairy tale to airline safety instructions and unsolicited mail. The poet admits to being "licked all over by the English tongue," and the title of this book may remind readers that an intimate partner who also gives language lessons is called, euphemistically, a "pillow dictionary."

This new edition offers newly updated terms, and provides the latest research on word origins and meanings, with guidelines on accurate usage.

Discusses the nature, origins, and development of language and lists the meanings and associated word for more than thirteen thousand Indo-European root words.