zzBook Review: The American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition(2012.1)

Oeasy · 发表于 2013-8-22 19:41:48

本帖最后由 Oeasy 于 2014-1-1 18:20 编辑

From：http://randommisanthrope.com/201 ... ionary-5th-edition/

I’m a logophile, which according to my new dictionary, is “one who appreciates and enjoys words.”  I think that pretty much sums up all of us here at Random Misanthrope.  One would be hard-pressed to find a greater cabal of bibliophiles.  I used the word cabal because I’ve always wanted to use that in a sentence, and we are plotting to take over the literary world after all.

When my dear sister gave me an Amazon gift card for Christmas I thought long and hard about what to purchase.  That I would purchase a book was a given for sure, but what type of book?  Some of you might know my penchant for non-fiction, so it is with no stretch of the imagination that I would settle for something in that genre.

I have always coveted the Oxford English Dictionary, or OED — all 20 volumes of it!  Unfortunately my sister’s generous gift card fell short of the thousand dollars needed to purchase such a treasure.  Not to be deterred from owning a comprehensive dictionary of some kind, I stumbled across an article in the New York Times regarding the recently released 5th Edition of the American Heritage Dictionary.  Not only did two thousand plus pages worth of words intrigue me, but that it had taken a decade to update was equally impressive.  Even better was the fact that at $60 dollars it was well within my gift card’s price range.  I was even more pleased when Amazon was selling it for $38 dollars!  I don’t think I’ve ever clicked on an online purchase button quicker.

A few days later the tome of words arrived.  At 8 pounds shipping weight and 11.3 x 8.8 x 2.4 inches, this is an impressive book to carry around.  But as we all know, looks are not everything: it is what is inside that counts.

The first trial of my lovely dictionary came at work when my boss lamented to me that the local newspaper had misspelled an ad which he had placed.  I did not doubt for a second the veracity of his claim, but as the good Ronald Reagan once remarked about the Russians: “Trust, but verify.”  The word in question was in memorium, which is what the newspaper had printed.  My boss was adamant that it was spelled in memoriam and vehemently defended his position.  To avoid a prolonged logomachy, out from my briefcase came the new American Heritage Dictionary.  A cursory look-up vindicated my boss and provided a J’accuse damnation to the local newspaper editors.

Since then I’ve had the pleasure of looking up several more words, all of which were found in my dictionary.  The biggest workout came while reading the late Christopher Hitchens’ autobiography, Hitch-22.  Not even halfway through the book I stumbled across words such as: dyspeptic, polemical, ontology, lambent, milliner, inchoate, taciturnity, portentous, anomic, lugubrious, scintilla, doggerel, donnish, and apotropaically to mention just a few —  The American Heritage Dictionary defined them all.

When it comes to looking up words I am old-school, I prefer picking up a real book and turning the pages.  But not everybody is like me and the editors of The American Heritage Dictionary were wise to include a free companion app with their dictionary, a $24.99 dollar value!  Inside the hardcover is a sheet containing a code which you can redeem online and  download the app for either an iPhone/iPod, iPad, or Android phone.  Please be advised that you can only use this code once, so if you have all three of these devices, you can only activate the app on one of these, unfortunately.  Sad as this might be, the convenience of having 175,000 definitions, 4,000 full-color images, and 69,000 real-voice pronunciations at your fingertips is unbeatable.  I decided to download and activate the dictionary app on my Android smartphone and run it through its paces.  The first word I punched in was Kokopelli in honor of my anthropologist friend Frances, and lo and behold, the dictionary had it!  Impressive…

As I mentioned before The American Heritage Dictionary contains over 4,000 full-color and black-and-white images which is great for people like me who like to flip through pages and browse.  This morning I was flipping through the dictionary and my two and a half year old son screamed in delight when he saw a picture of a llama.  Later that afternoon I screamed in delight when I stumbled across one of my favorite Swedish authors, Selma Lagerlöf.  This for me solidified The American Heritage Dictionary as one of my favorite go-to books.

A good dictionary should never be static, and like society as a whole, should endeavor to evolve.  Ten years since the last edition with 10,000 new words and senses, The American Heritage Dictionary has some surprising additions.  My personal favorite is: asshat.

In summation, The American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition is a winner in my book.  A perfect companion for logophiles who cannot afford to buy a complete set of the Oxford English Dictionary.  I could not be happier with this purchase and would recommend it to all bibliophiles and aspiring writers.

Oeasy · 发表于 2014-1-1 18:21:55

http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=4326

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, 5th edition
November 14, 2012 @ 2:13 pm · Filed by Victor Mair under Dialects, Dictionaries, Errors, Etymology, Research tools, Resources, Words words words

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As soon as I heard that the 5th edition of The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (AHD) had come out, I rushed to the nearest Barnes & Noble bookstore (yes, they still exist — that was Borders that closed) and plunked down two Bens (hundred dollar bills) to buy three copies at $60 each:  one for my office at Penn, one for my study at home, and one for a friend.  The 5th ed. was actually published in November, 2011, but I was in China then, and didn't get a chance to buy my own copies until the day I arrived back on American soil.

I own at least one copy of each of the five editions of AHD; in most cases, I own multiple copies and all the available formats.  In fact you could say that I'm an "AHD kòng 控 / otaku"  ("AHD obsessive"). If it didn't sound too weird, I'd say that I'm in love with the AHD, but it does sound weird, so I won't admit that.  But I will confess that AHD, from the first edition, has always been my "number one" reference work and, if I were going to be exiled to Xinjiang or Siberia or marooned on a desert island, the one book, indeed, the single belonging that I would want to take with me, would — without any hesitation whatsoever — be the AHD.

All right, since everybody is probably thinking that Mair has become touched in the head, I'd better explain myself a bit.  After all, I do have my reasons for being so enamored of the AHD.  First and foremost is "Appendix I:  Indo-European Roots".  Whoever initially got the idea to include this appendix is a genius; we are all forever in their debt.  Second is "Appendix II: Semitic Roots", which I think first appeared in the 4th edition.  The third reason is that the essentials of the precious data in appendices I and II are incorporated into the etymologies for the main entries and in separate word histories.  The fourth reason is the careful attention paid to the evolution of the alphabet, both at the beginning of each letter and in an excellent table (on p. 51 of AHD5).  The list of my reasons for worshipping the AHD could be extended indefinitely:  the brilliant chart of Indo-European languages on the endpapers, the 4,000+ full-color illustrations, the up-to-date vocabulary, the superb usage notes, the splendid essays on Indo-European and Proto-Semitic language and culture respectively by Calvert Watkins and John Huehnergard, and so forth.

As a Sinologist, however, I am particularly indebted to the AHD for taking Chinese and other East Asian languages seriously and doing such a good job with them.  Much of the credit for this goes to Senior Lexicographer, Patrick Taylor, with whom I engaged in extensive discussion during the decade of editing that went into the making of the 5th edition.  Our correspondence was occasioned by the fact that I was delighted by the inclusion of a word that I had coined in the 4th edition, namely, "topolect", but disappointed that the definition given was not what I had intended.  On p. 1822a of the 4th edition, we find this definition:  "A set of similar dialects constituting any of the larger distinct regional varieties of a language.  For example, Mandarin Chinese is a topolect that includes the dialects of Beijing and Nanjing, and is distinct from Hakka, another topolect of Chinese."  Unfortunately, this definition signifies essentially what Chinese linguists mean by dà fāngyán 大方言 ("large / major topolect"), whereas what I had intended was simply no more and no less than what the Chinese mean by fāngyán 方言 ("speech form of a place", i.e., "topolect" — whether large or small).  I maintain that "dialect" is a serious mistranslation of fāngyán 方言, one that has wreaked endless havoc in linguistic analysis of Sinitic languages.  In a forthcoming paper that will appear in the Festschrift for Alain Peyraube, I explain in detail what is wrong with the mistaken equation of fāngyán 方言 and "dialect", and propose alternative renderings.

I should also note that the outstanding coverage of East Asian languages in AHD5 in general owes much to Zev Handel, who was the Etymology Consultant for Chinese and Other East Asian Languages.

I think that I probably first used the word "topolect" in writing in What Is a Chinese “Dialect/Topolect”? Reflections on Some Key Sino-English Linguistic Terms (Also available as a 2.2 MB PDF.), Sino-Platonic Papers, 29 (September, 1991), 1-31, though I had been using the term in lectures already during the previous decade.

In AHD5, "topolect" is now defined thus:

The language or speech of a particular place, such as a country, region, village, or valley, especially:  a. Any of the Sinitic languages, such as Mandarin or Cantonese.  b. Any of the regional and local varieties of one of the Sinitic languages, such [as] one of the dialects of Mandarin.

I am satisfied with this definition.

A couple of years ago, the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary informed me that they were going to include "topolect" in the OED.  I am interested in seeing how they define it.  No matter how it turns out, I'm grateful to AHD4 for making topolect a matter of record and AHD5 for defining it correctly and integrating it in their treatment of Sinitic languages as a whole.

liuyunrushui · 发表于 2014-1-1 22:14:03

感谢O 大^_^

祝新年快乐，事事如意。
感谢您对论坛做出的贡献以及对后学者的指导。

liuyunrushui · 发表于 2014-1-1 22:25:23

ru-board上的大神viarmx8好像制作过dsl 版本的，不过现在链接已经失效了好像。

tovaremeterio · 发表于 2014-4-1 08:34:05

The AHD 5th will be a great contribution to this forum... I am eagerly expecting it.

I will like to helo to anyone who dares to make an electronic version in MDict format or EPWING.

[词典讨论] zzBook Review: The American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Edition(2012.1)