Review by Choice Review
The number of publishers offering a combined dictionary and thesaurus in one volume has grown rapidly over the past few years, with current examples available from Oxford University Press, HarperCollins, Wiley/Cassell's, and DK Publishing. Oxford University Press alone offers seven versions: Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, ed. by M. Waite (2nd ed., 2007); Compact Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus and Wordpower Guide, ed. by S. Hawker (2nd ed., 2006); Paperback Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus, ed. by S. Hawker and M. Waite (2nd ed., 2007); and Pocket Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide (2004), Color Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide (2nd ed., 2007), Little Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide (2003), and Oxford Mini Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide (2004), all ed. by S. Hawker. A new publication, such as Merriam-Webster's Dictionary and Thesaurus (MWDT), faces the formidable task of competing with the established Oxford line.Given that MWDT has only 57,000 main entry words (less than half those in Pocket Oxford Dictionary, Thesaurus, and Wordpower Guide), one might easily dismiss it as lacking in substance. A winning feature of the MWDT, however, is its attractive page layout. Instead of dividing the page in half, with the top for main entry words and the bottom for synonyms (the Oxford style), the Merriam-Webster volume highlights the synonyms in light gray shading and places them directly after the definitions. MWDT supplies part of speech labels and pronunciation guidance, but only occasionally references language of origin. It excludes obscenities, biographical names, and geographical names. While the user will find definitions for "hip-hop" and "hip-huggers," surprisingly, given MWDT's 2007 imprint, "google" and "wikipedia" (CH, Mar'06, 43-3736) are missing. MWDT is an attractive, current, inexpensive volume; because of the limited word count, however, college students will favor the more inclusive Oxford titles. Summing Up: Recommended. General readers. D. C. Dickinson emeritus, University of Arizona
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
