Overview
If the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the mother of all dictionaries, the Shorter is its most accomplished offspring. At one-tenth the size of OED--and a fraction of the price--the Shorter offers one-third the content and the same quality of lexical excellence of its parent dictionary. The Shorter offers over 500,000 definitions that cover virtually every word or phrase in use in English--worldwide--since 1700. Each entry identifies each word's various meanings, origins, part of speech, pronunciation, and combination's in which the word is often found, as well as cross-references to related words. The Shorter, however, offers something that no competitor can match: the historical, literary approach made justly famous by the OED. Thousands upon thousands of changing meanings are followed throughout history, illustrated by 85,000 quotations from 7,000 authors.
And now, with 2,500 new words and 500 new quotations, the Shorter is fresher than ever, fully responsive to ever-changing English language. Here are such new words as Afrobeat, carbon-neutral, darknet, knuckle-dragger, retro-futurist, testosteronic and thousands more; to call someone a testosteronic, retro-futurist knuckle-dragger is no longer an incomprehensible insult.