Diccionario Esencial de la Lengua Espanola [Spanish]

This is an excellent dictionary for those who speak Spanish well but need a dictionary to expand Spanish words knowledge and usage in Latin America. Great value. Just make sure you get the -Esencial- volume as there are similar versions that provide translations from Spain rather than Latin America.

This dictionary is perfect for an intermediate level Spanish student who wishes to have a unilingual resource without lengthy and complicated definitions. It is an adequate size dictionary with about 30.000 entries and a grammatical appendix. It does contain quite a diverse vocabulary with common idiomatic expressions associated with some of the words. It does also indicate where applicable if the word is familiar (colloquial), considered vulgar or regional (specific to one or more Spanish countries). I use it quite regularly for everyday word clarification and the words are normally referenced. Since I am doing a specialization in Spanish it's not a primary reference for me but as mentioned above the dictionary is a perfect daily desktop dictionary and great for a student who needs a small to midsize reliable unilingual resource.

This is a great Spanish-Spanish dictionary for students of Spanish at the intermediate to advanced level, because it was designed for people learning the language. So the definitions are written more simply and they seem to have included the more commonly used words. I would recommend it for people who are trying to get away from using bilingual dictionaries only.