Get yourself a BIG dictionary.
356967
I just completed a 20th century art course here in Southern California with this book as the chosen textbook.  I would consider it at the medium to advanced level. It was much cheaper on Amazon than the college bookstore or the museum store!  Like the title of this review suggests, the authors were pre-occupied with their knowlege of uncommon words in the English Language.  I would never encourage the "Dumbing down of America" but the word usage in this book is to the point of distraction.  The new Oxford Essential Business and Office Dictionary makes it a point in it's forward to point out that usage like this is superfluous. Er, I mean needless.  The reproduction is outstanding and the physical structure is very good.  I have every intention of making this book part of my permanent collection.  And yes, agreeing with the other reviewers above, it is heavy.  But hey, with a few extra sit-ups and one or two extra laps and you'll be just fine.
Mike
1722977
Merriam-Webster's Intermediate Dictionary, 1998 edition , is a good dictionary for students 11 - 14 years old.

It claims a coverage of 65 000 entries ( definitions, spellings and
pronunciations )selected on the basis of their occurrence in textbooks and
in other school materials in all subjects.

Word history paragraphs with many formal etymologies are found ; as well, paragraphs on differences in meaning that help keep synonyms distinct.

Even usage notes are included . Prefixes as well with a list of words
carrying that prefix.

Content is up-to-date with words from the field of computers, technology and medicine.

It also provides 1 000 illustrations but in black and white.

it is surprisingly not heavy for its 940 pages and can be held in
the palm of one hand.
4007404
I am sure the contents of the dictionary is excellent. I have owned several over the years. Now at an advanced age the print is too small for my old eyes. I gave the book away and bought another leading brand.
921482
The problem with this dictionary is that it's a digitized book, not an e-book.  For books you plan to read sequentially page 1-NNN that's fine but for a dictionary there needs to be a lot more sophisticated navigation.  This book is one better bought  in print.
2126464
I usually have this dictionary next to me when I'm studying. I rarely take it with me, as it's huge....But nonetheless I would recommend this version or at the very least the pocket edition if you're about to start law school. It's very helpful for words that you don't know, and words that you thought you knew until you realized they had a different meaning. You can get the definitions on Westlaw, but I find that I study better if I don't have to get on the internet to do my work.

Buy it. It's an investment.
2536363
When I first received this dictionary, I was surprised that it wasn't a huge, hulking beast.  I used to own a giant dictionary when I was a kid, and I was hoping this would be the same.  I was surprised, however, to find that the pages were very, very thin, and the number of entries was quite complete.  A larger dictionary would probably not be handled well by my children anyway.  The most important part is the content.  It has entries for lots of obscure terms now in use in American media, like "dotcom". My family and I are very satisfied with this purchase, and our older dictionaries will be now be donated to a thrift store.
2937034
Not what I expected from a so called thesaurus, and I use that term loosely. It is more a dictionary. It gives you one lengthy definition after the other of the same word, instead of the lengthy list of useful synonyms that should be standard in a "true" thesaurus. This format is a major time waster if you are trying to find just the "right word", or the correct "flavor" of the word.

Since our entire society has been dummied down for the last 50 years, this is just another tool used in the process to turn us into coddled semi-literates.

Makes a nice paper weight though!!

Check out Webster's New World Roget's A-Z Thesaurus for a workable "true" thesaurus format.
2177190
A bit of a big pocket guide, not a teaching system, so just helps with a lot daily use sentences and words.
258710
It's hard to find the words you want.  The dictionary does put in the English word but it following the Norwegian word  Some pages drag over to the next due to electronic format.  I read and speak several other languages and I think that this learning experience probably needs a hard copy of the English/Norwegian dictionary
1189641
"Everyday, choose one word, one you're not sure you know, and look it up in the dictionary." ~ Marilyn vos Savant

Frank Minirth has written a very useful book but it should be more appropriately titled: A Brilliant Vocabulary: Proven Ways to Increase Your Word Power.

This book is mostly made up of word lists with short definitions. At this point you may be asking whether it would just be better to buy a dictionary and read it over a year's time. I'd suggest doing that anyway and I did it once. However, this book has words in lists of various categories like art, music, physics, chemistry and biology.

Frank Minirth believes you can develop a photographic memory. But will this book do that for you? I don't think simply memorizing words or Bible verses (there is a chapter filled with Bible verses) will do that for you. This book does however teach you how to remember words through memory techniques.

One of the things I love to do while reading is to write down unfamiliar words, which I then look up at dictionary dot com. This has been very helpful as I branch out into new territories where understanding a word becomes essential to understanding new concepts and ideas. This book will help you in a similar way although it presents the words without using them in sentences. For that you may want to look up specific words online to see how they are used and in what context.

I wouldn't recommend that you read this book all at once. That would be overwhelming. Perhaps read the introduction to each chapter and then go back to the lists as you have time to learn new words. One of the words I learned was "philomuse - lover of poetry."

Since mental exercises help to develop brain cells and connections you may also want to use this book to prevent age-related cognitive decline. At the end of the book there is a casual discussion about the benefits of certain drugs that affect memory as we age.

So if you love reading dictionaries this book will be wildly enjoyable for you. I'd suggest reading just a few word lists a day to increase your vocabulary over the next year.

~The Rebecca Review
2451688
A wonderful dictionary. Has a lot of signs, and meanings. Explain you how to make the sign. I love it.
4739322
Oxford Dictionaries have earned the huge recognition accorded to them. In light of this, I regret that I purchased this particular dictionary. Some key terms current in academia are omitted. Other key terms are so terse as to be unsatisfactory.
4395620
This dictionary contains over 90,000 words and phrases, with solid explanatory notes where necessary and sufficient discrimination of different senses of the English word, which is far better than any other English-Mongolian dictionary I have had to work with.  While it is a bit hefty for a beginning student, it is essential for anyone continuing in Mongolian; I work in Mongolia as a translator and often have recourse to it, for no other E-M dictionary comes close to it.  My impression is that the coverage of British colloquial equivalents is perhaps fuller than that of American, which some might consider a feature rather than a bug.

It does have some flaws, however--indeed, I worked for Monsudar on the 2nd edition, as well as the forthcoming Mongolian-English dictionary, back in early 2010 as an English editor, and while the mistakes mentioned below would have been corrected in a second edition, neither of those volumes has yet appeared on the market.  First, there are occasional gaps in vocabulary that are irksome for the professional translator but of no great importance for the student:  the 1st edition includes "parrot" but not "parakeet," "commodious" but not "commode," "cognitive" but not "cognition," and "discomfort" but not "discombobulate," for example.  The 2nd edition was to have added about 5,000 new headwords, but in any case it would be a bit unfair to criticize necessary editorial selection for not producing a complete translation of the AHD.  More troublesome, alas, is that there are occasional misprints that make the dictionary slightly unreliable, e.g. the first definition given for "trademark" is in fact simply a repeat of the second definition for "trade-off" (two entries below).  Third, in general the coverage is a bit patchier on the colloquial level than the formal, but many specialized terms are missing as well, such as (surprisingly) "ion" and any of its derivatives.  Finally, very occasionally you'll find a headword out of order.

Nonetheless, I strongly recommend this dictionary.  While it is less important for the student than a Mongolian-English dictionary (for which Charles Bawden's dictionary is still by far the best), it is still a necessary book to have.
1435845
Tell me, does a "pocket" dictionary measuring 8"long by 5.5" wide X 2" thick! Sound like it would fit in any pocket you have on any piece of clothing??  Only if you had a coat like Capt. Kangaroo!  This was bought to replace my old pocket dictionary which measured 5"x 3"x1.5" dated 1988.  In all fairness, the new one also contains a Thesaurus (which I didn't ask for) It contains many new words that didn't exist in 1988,but still,from 1.5 inches thick to 2" thick,come on man.
4285448
This dictionary has tons of information on the language, almost too much. Sometimes it takes a long time just to find the phrase or idea your trying to look up because there is so much info on each word -- but maybe that's good. As a future Spanish teacher I figured I would need a great reference and usage tool like this and I'll probably use it occasionally, but so far, I prefer using the more simple and straightforward dictionaries of Spanish/English or English/Spanish. It might be overkill for you. Hope this helps.
107663
I would recommend using the online version of this book, it will be so much easier and quicker to look up words. The online version does cost money but it so worth it.
3869473
It should be useful to decipher the ubiquitously used Word.

The manuals I have purchased before have turned out to be excellent.

Four and 1/2 stars