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The Oxford Paperback Dictionary

A comprehensive dictionary plus entries on people and places: ideal for home and office.

Spelling and meaning
Over 134,000 words, phrases, and definitions

Correct English
Hundreds of usage notes with guidance on correct English

People and places
4,000 concise, informative encyclopedic entries on famous people, places, and institutions

Pronunciation
Pronunciations given for difficult words, using a simple respelling system

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Preface

The Oxford Paperback Dictionary was first published in 1979 as an entirely new member of the Oxford family of dictionaries, specially prepared as a compact, up-to-date guide to current English words and phrases, with the emphasis on a clear expansive style and straightforward definitions.

This new edition preserves the aims of previous editions in making information easy to find and to understand, retaining popular features such as the use of examples to illustrate meanings and easy-to-read guidance on the pronunciation of difficult words. More prominence has been given in this edition to controversial aspects of the language, with an increased number of notes on points of correct usage and etymological details.

The overall layout of the entries has been improved, using successful techniques adopted by other Oxford dictionaries and making all the information provided clearer and more accessible. In addition, the dictionary now uses very few abbreviations, in particular giving grammatical labels in full. This change seemed particularly appropriate in the light of the new emphasis on English grammar in the national curriculum for schools.

Dictionaries are frequently used to settle questions of spelling, and consequently for this edition we have included many alternative spellings and guidance on American English variants.

An important feature of the previous edition was the inclusion of entries for the names of famous people, places, and institutions. This proved to be tremendously popular, and has been retained. Of course, since the publication of the last edition, the world has changed in many ways, and for this new edition the coverage has been brought up to date and expanded to reflect changes in the world political situation, advances in technology, etc., which have introduced new names and terms into everyday language whilst making others redundant.

No selection, or its principles, can satisfy everyone. Our general aim for this new edition has been to include items of relevance to the modern world that have a permanent place in their own field and are known to a wider public—information that will be useful and interesting to the wide variety of users of the kind that the dictionary has already attracted in homes, offices, and schools throughout the English-speaking world.

HELEN LIEBECK & ELAINE POLLARD