The New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on CD-ROM

As a printed book, this dictionary takes up two thick and heavy volumes, but on CD-ROM you get the same material on one disk. It covers half a million definitions in 7.5 million words of text - and it throws in 83,000 quotations for good measure.

The basic stock of words is drawn from the Oxford English Dictionary, but it's 'New' because the explanation of terms and the illustrative material has been updated. It contains items from historical and literary English to modern street slang, scientific and technical terms, and contemporary jargon. It's possible to install the whole program onto your hard disk, or (possibly more useful) to install just the interface, leaving the huge lexical database on the CD in the D: drive.


The interface is quite simple. You type in a word and are presented with what's called the headword followed by its pronunciation, definition, variant spelling, etymology, and date of first use. If the explanation which is offered seems insufficient, you can highlight any single word and with a click be taken to a sub-explanation. From the main screen, you are also offered three types of search for further information. An 'index' search will reveal derivatives of the headword, plus parts of speech. A 'full text' search provides the etymology, definitions, and illustrative quotations. A 'special' search offers anagrams, rhymes, and phonetics. 'Tasse' for instance (an anagram of 'seats') is 'one of a series of overlapping splints or plates in a suit of armour'. Bet you didn't know that.

If you are not sure how to spell a word, you can substitute the wildcard (*) for any number of letters, and the program will list all possible spellings. There's also a 'history' menu item which shows you a list of all the words you've checked so far. The program comes with a variety of fonts for clear reading on screen - including Greek glyphs for showing etymological origins. You can alter the appearance of the text on screen via a preferences menu, and the presentation of results is colour-coded.

This is a dictionary which has been cleverly designed to offer basic information quickly. Further depth is then provided via separate sections and extensive hyperlinks. The sources of the quotations I checked included Evelyn Waugh, Sean O'Faolain, J.G. Farrell, and Beryl Bainbridge, as well as Charles Dickens and Thomas Pynchon. This seems to reveal OUP's efforts to provide contemporary relevance for their valuable database.

This electronic dictionary is 'Shorter' because the full version is now so gigantic. In fact Oxford have decided to make the full OED available online in order to reduce printing costs and make updates easier. Payment is by subscription, the rate for which is quite high - which makes this shortened version on disk a good value alternative.