Full Reference List: Dictionaries, Paper and Online

Checking one dictionary is rarely enough. You’ll often find that they disagree about which are the most-common spellings, pronunciations, and meanings. "Reading" a dictionary is great fun, but if you’re doing it to add new words to your vocabulary, then your speech and writing may become stilted or odd. When you learn new words in this way, you may miss contextual or subtextual clues about a word’s proper usage, its native milieu, or its register. A better way to add to your vocabulary is to read fiction and non-fiction by superb writers.

American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 4th edition. Very reliable with excellent notes on word histories. Includes audible pronunciations.

Allsopp, Richard. Dictionary of Caribbean English Usage. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996. For greatest accuracy, this work should be consulted in conjunction with the Cassidy/Le Page book below.

Barnhart, Clarence L.; Steinmetz, Sol; and Barnart, Robert K., eds. Second Barnhart Dictionary of New English. Bronxville, N.Y.: Barnhart/Harper & Row, 1980. As in the case of the book below, many of the words contained herein have since become common English, while others have faded into historical curiosities. Still, these works show the depth of English that is often excluded (usually because of oversight or limitations of space and time) from mainstream dictionaries.

Barnhart, Clarence L.; Steinmetz, Sol; and Barnart, Robert K., eds. The Barnhart Dictionary of New English Since 1963. Bronxville, N.Y.: Barnhart/Harper & Row, 1973.

Bluestein, Gene. Anglish/Yinglish. 2 ed. Lincoln, Neb.: University of Nebraska Press, 1998. Covers Yiddish in English.

Cassidy, Frederick G. ed. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. I, A-C. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1985. This and the succeeding volumes listed below are an incredible work of scholarship and lexicography. There’s nothing else like it in American English, though DARE was begun more than 100 years ago in an attempt to create a dictionary parallel to Wright’s English Dialect Dictionary. Fred Cassidy died in 2000, so the fourth volume is listed below under the name of the new chief editor, Joan Hall.

Cassidy, Frederick G., and Hall, Joan Houston, eds. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. II, D-H. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991.

Cassidy, Frederick G., and Hall, Joan Houston, eds. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. III, I-O. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996.

Cassidy, Frederick, and Le Page, Robert. Dictionary of Jamaican English. 2 ed. Kingston, Jamaica: University of West Indies Press, 2002. See the listing for Allsopp’s dictionary above.

Corominas, J. Breve Diccionario Etimologico De La Lengua Castellana/ Brief Etymological Dictionary of the Spanish Language, 3rd edition. Madrid: Gredos, 2005.

Cruz, Bill, and Teck, Bill, eds. Official Spanglish Dictionary. New York: Fireside, 1998. Not very academic but fun.

Dalzell, Tom, and Victor, Terry. The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English. Routledge: London and New York, 2006. Almost completely different from the earlier editions of Partridge (see below). Not very comprehensive, not fully historical, and very expensive, but a necessary part of the serious slang fan’s library.

De Bhaldraithe, Tomás, ed. English-Irish Dictionary. Dublin: 1959.

Dictionary of Scots Language. Edinburgh: Scottish Language Dictionaries Limited, 2004. It is incredible that this historical dictionary—actually a combination of several print works—is freely available online.

Encarta Dictionary and Thesaurus, CD-ROM, 2005. Good mainly as a secondary source, but has exceptional coverage of new words. Also includes Spanish, French, German, and Italian dictionaries.

Glinert, Lewis. Joys of Hebrew. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992.

Gomez de Silva, G. Elsevier’s Concise Spanish Etymological Dictionary. Amsterdam:Elsevier Science Publishing, 1985.

Gomez de Silva, G. Diccionario Breve de Mexicanismos. Mexico: FCE, Academia Mexico, 2006.

Görlach, Manfred. Dictionary of European Anglicisms. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Green, Jonathon. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang, 2e, Weidenfeld & Nicolson: London, 2005. Vastly superior to the earlier edition. Has a huge headword list, but includes many terms gathered willy-nilly from the Internet and elsewhere without proper substantiation.

Hall, Joan Houston, ed. Dictionary of American Regional English, vol. IV, P-Sk. Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2002. See notes for other DARE volumes above.

Harkavy’s Manual Dictionary. New York: Hebrew Publishing Co.,1894. Online as Harkavy’s Yiddish-English (6th edition), English-Yiddish (11th edition) Dictionary (1910).

Harper Collins German Dictionary. 2 ed. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.

Jarman, Beatriz Galimberti, and Russell, Roy, eds. Oxford Spanish Dictionary. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003.

Library of Congress, Manuscript Division, Washington D.C. Papers of the Works Progress Administration, Lexicon of Trade Jargon, boxes A798–A804. Grant is at work on a manuscript that would, at last, let this project finally see the light of day.

Lighter, J.E., ed. Historical Dictionary of American Slang. New York: Random House, vol. I A-G 1994, vol. II H-O 1997. Alas, this serious scholarly work may never be completed, although Oxford University Press took it on in 2003. Now only covers through the letter O. Grant formerly served as project editor for this dictionary.

Macquarie Dictionary, 3e. Macquarie University: Macquarie Library, 1997.

Mathews, Mitford M., ed. A Dictionary of Americanisms on Historical Principles. Chicago: Univ. of Chicago Press, 1951.

Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary, 11th edition. New York: Merriam-Webster; 2003. This is the dictionary we recommend to anyone who has basic, unspecialized day-to-day needs.

Montgomery, Michael, and Hall, Joseph S., eds. Dictionary of Smoky Mountain English. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press. Under-reviewed and poorly publicized, this dictionary deserves much greater attention than it has received. Covers much that is missing elsewhere.

Moore, Bruce, ed. Australian Oxford Dictionary, 2 ed. Melbourne: Oxford University Press, 2004.

New Oxford American Dictionary, 2e, New York: Oxford University Press 2004-2007. As included with Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Grant had a hand in compiling this dictionary, mainly as a contributor of new words.

New Revised Velásquez Spanish and English Dictionary. Clinton, N.J: New Win Publishing, 1985.

OneLook allows visitors to search many dictionaries at once. The most reliable sources tend to appear at the top of the search results. Dictionaries searched include Encarta’s World English Dictionary, the Compact Oxford English Dictionary, Merriam Webster’s Online English Dictionary (probably the Collegiate 10th edition, but they may have newer content from the 11th edition and the upcoming 12th edition), the Cambridge International Dictionary of English, American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (4th edition), Cambridge Dictionary of American English, and many others. OneLook also includes Grant’s own online lexicon of slang, jargon, and other words from the fringes of English, Double-Tongued Dictionary.

Online Etymology Dictionary. While useful for a snapshot of a word’s history, sources are not cited for each entry—only generally across the site—so it’s impossible to say how reliable they are. Little primary research seems to have been done and some of the works cited are unreliable. Still, if one does not have access to the Oxford English Dictionary, then this site might suffice.

Orsman, H.W., ed. Dictionary of New Zealand English. Auckland: Oxford University Press, 1997.

Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus, New York: Oxford University Press 2004. As included with Apple’s Mac OS X operating system. Grant had a small hand in compiling this thesaurus.

Oxford Duden German Dictionary. 2 ed. New York: Oxford University Press, 2001.

Oxford English Dictionary Online, Oxford University Press. The most-lauded and most-corrected dictionary in English.This is not a free site, unfortunately, though many public libraries offer it at no cost, and it is freely available across many university and college computer networks. The online version includes draft entries posted quarterly. Careful scholars will note that the first citation for an OED entry is probably not the first time a word was ever used, just the first time a word was found in print by OED editors. Further, since the publication of the second edition in 1989, many new digital databases have appeared which index the full-text content of books, newspapers, ephemera, and other printed matter; it is now commonplace for many of the second-edition entries to be antedated by a brief search of these databases, but because of careful but ponderous editing, it may be years or decades before these new, earlier uses are reflected in the work.

Oxford English-Hebrew Dictionary. New York: Oxford University Press, 1998.

Partridge, Eric, and Beale, Paul, eds. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 8e. New York: MacMillan, 1984. Contains many terms that cannot be found elsewhere; however, while this is partly due to Partridge’s obsessive collecting, it is largely due to his inclusion of spurious, false, or nonce terms—a problem many of his works share. Another common problem with Partridge’s works is his overly broad definition of slang; many of the terms are better classified as jargon, catchphrases, dialect, or even as standard English. Beale has corrected for some of the problems, but before taking this text for granted the careful scholar will double-check elsewhere for veracity.

Partridge, Eric, ed. A Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, 4e. New York: MacMillan, 1951. See note above. Partridge often removed and revised large swaths of text between editions, not always to the betterment of the text, so having more than one edition of DSUE can be useful.

Partridge, Eric. A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English, 2e. New York: Macmillan, 1959. A good work to check to be sure that all bases are covered, but not a source to be cited without double-checking other works for confirmation.

Partridge, Eric. A Dictionary of the Underworld, British and American. New York: Bonanza Books, 1961. See notes for other Partridge works above.

Random House Webster’s College Dictionary, CD-ROM, 2004. Good mainly as a secondary source.

Random House Webster’s Unabridged Dictionary, CD-ROM, 1999. Good mainly as a secondary source.

Rosten, Leo. Hooray for Yiddish! New York: Simon & Schuster, 1982. Rosten’s scholarship tends toward the jokey and hokey, but his works are fun, highly readable, and sometimes the only source to turn to for a quick gloss of Yiddishisms that have entered mainstream American English.

Sáez, Julia Sanmartín. Diccionario de Argot. Madrid: Espasa, 2003.

Safire, William. Safire’s New Political Dictionary. New York: Random House, 1993. More encyclopedic than dictionary-like, this work benefits greatly from Safire’s decades in politics and his large Rolodex. Many behind-the-scenes stories are unique to this book. The work is in need of an updated edition.

Webster’s New World Dictionary and Thesaurus, CD-ROM. Macmillan, 1998. Good mainly as a secondary source.

Webster’s Third New International Dictionary, online and on CD-ROM. New York: Merriam-Webster. Originally published 1961, updated in its CD and online versions. As of this writing, the full collegiate and unabridged dictionaries are freely available online after watching a brief animated advertisement. A bargain, we say. Also available after watching the advertisement are medical, French-English, and Spanish-English dictionaries, a style guide, an atlas, a thesaurus, and a collegiate encyclopedia.

Weinreich, Uriel. Modern English-Yiddish Yiddish English Dictionary. New York: YIVO, 1968).

Weiser, Chaim M. Frumspeak. New York: Rowman and Littlefield, 2004. The language of yeshivas, Orthodox jewry, and those who speak a combination of modern Yiddish, Hebrew, and English.

WordNet, Cognitive Science Laboratory, Princeton University. Includes fantastic hierarchies, but the definitions are sometimes weak.

Full Reference List: Dictionaries, Paper and Online