Re: Merriam-Webster's Unabridged vs Oxford English Dictionary

Paul J Kriha wrote:

Peter T. Daniels <grammatim@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote in message
news:449AA888.41F4@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Paul J Kriha wrote:

What should I get if English is my second language and I
have a passion for knowing it well?

English is also my non-first language.
My personal impression is that out of those four mentioned
by Peter (OED, Chambers, Collins, Macquarie), Collins
is (by far) the least often wrong.

What do you mean by "wrong"?

By "the least often wrong" I mean "contains the fewest mistakes".
Typically an entry contains information that is internally contradicted
by other entries or by entries in several other dictionaries.

For example The Concise Oxford Dictionary (7th edition) which I bought
in 1982 has on almost every page at least one misspelled etymology
entry. Foreign words are often butchered with letters missing,
misplaced diacritics and indifferent typesetting. It makes me not trust
any of the etymology entries.

The HarperCollins publication is a completely different kettle of fish.

None of them will be of much use if you're
reading contemporary American fiction. You need MW or AHD.

I hardly ever need a dictionary when I read the contemporary
English or American fiction. My passive vocabulary is okay.

However, when I do need a dictionary, I prefer to use the
one that includes all English, American, as well as Australian
usages. This is because I frequently move between the main
E. language environments.

Sounds like an ad for the "Microsoft Encarta" dictionary, one of the
worst English dictionaries ever published. The editor, Anne Soukhanov,
was all over the radio when it came out, and she used the same three or
four examples in every interview, so I looked some of them up -- and
there was a factual error right there in one of them! Unfortunately I
don't remember what it was. But I do remember that under "pavement" it
compares US "sidewalk," but under "sidewalk" it doesn't compare UK
"pavement." (It bothers me that in the David Lodge novel set partly in
Hawaii -- the one with the sunbeds, which after hundreds of pages I
finally figured out weren't lounges for lazing in the sun in, but rather
tanning beds -- he has Americans using "pavement" to refer to
sidewalks.)
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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