

Rourke, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Zadie Smith, and hundreds more. For example, the definition for villain has been updated from "A rouge, a rascal" to "A criminal or disreputable person." Hussy, formerly defined as "A woman of light or worthless character a pert girl," now reads "An impudent or immoral girl or woman." The SOED is further enhanced by new illustrative quotations, from such writers as Monica Ali, Anthony Bourdain, Charles Bukowski, Susan Faludi, Matt Groening, Spike Lee, P.J. Oxford's esteemed lexicographers have given this new edition a major rewrite, modernizing out-of-date definitions to reflect current meanings and associations. (To call someone a testosteronic, retro-futurist knuckle-dragger is no longer an incomprehensible insult). Here are such new words as Afrobeat, carbon-neutral, darknet, heaviosity, impactful, knuckle-dragger, nanomaterial, retro-futurist, smoosh, testosteronic, webinar, and thousands more. The SOED has opened its pages to the thousands of new words which have come into use since the previous edition and which have expanded the precision and expressive power of English. And now, with 2,500 new words and 500 new quotations, the Shorter is fresher than ever, fully responsive to ever-changing English language.

Thousand upon thousands of changing meanings are followed throughout history, illustrated by 85,000 quotations from 7,000 authors. The Shorter, however, offers something that no competitor can match: the historical, literary approach made justly famous by the OED. Each entry offers everything you would expect from a leading unabridged dictionary: it identifies each word's various meanings, origins, part of speech, pronunciation, and combinations in which the word is often found, as well as cross-references to related words. Indeed, no other dictionary, apart from the OED itself, comes close to the Shorter's range and depth, offering over 500,000 definitions that cover virtually every word or phrase in use in English-worldwide-since 1700. 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. If the 20-volume Oxford English Dictionary is the mother of all dictionaries, the Shorter is its most accomplished offspring.

Here is a new edition of the acclaimed Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, the first since 2002, updated, enlarged, and enlivened by new words, new definitions of old words, new illustrative quotations-and a new, fully customizable CD-ROM.
