Webster's Universal College Dictionary

I bought the April 1999 edition after spending an hour or two in the bookstore looking at several dictionaries so that I could find the best one for me.This one won easily. I can't remember whether the Merriam Webster Collegiate Dictionary was among the others, but I do remember being confused at some point in time by the similarities in appearance and name of these dictionaries. So I found the "No likelihood of consumer confusion?" review very helpful as I hadn't bothered to run it down so thoroughly. Thanks! It seems to me that only a legal system trapped in its own ever-diminishing circle could have concluded that there was no attempt by Random House to imitate. The dictionary, however, I have found to be excellent. In the three years or so I've had it I've found one mistake - a typo where "liberal" was used instead of "literal" in the definition of the word 'Pharisee'. I measure that against the innumerable occasions where its concise and elegant definitions have been a great help and source of knowledge. I really can't speak too highly of it, but I'll now just have to go out and compare it in my "relatively sophisticated" way to the Merriam-Webster.

As a Ph.D. student that English is not my native tongue I found this dictionary very helpful and easy to use. I use it to write and read professional publications in variety of fields. I was so happy to finally find a reliable dictionary that contains a lot of words and explain their definitions clearly.

You don't have to be a college student to appreciate this with-it dictionary. As a professional writer, I swear by it. It's not only useful for spelling and capitalization, it has proved invaluable in indicating when hyphenated compound words "graduate" to single words by virtue of their popular usage. (Examples: "head-hunting" became "headhunting" when employment recruiters began doing it; "email" is taking over the place that "e-mail" established; even "weekend" was hyphenated at first.) Accept no substitutes ... insist on the Random House Webster's College version. I buy nearly every edition of this classic, and I am always amazed at the number of new words it includes. I have also given it to friends, family, colleagues, and even my editor.

I write as a hobby and am a reference book addict. I own 10 dictionaries. I've had my copy of RH/Webster's for 3 years and have yet to find a word not listed in stunning detail. Buy this dictionary!

The second edition of Random House Webster's College Dictionary first published in 1997 when it was the latest at college dictionary market. Then, the publisher launched an annual update program in 1998. The 1999 update have more than 207,000 definitions with more new words than any other dictionary. The new words in science, computing, business, society etc were comprehensively updated. I always go to Random house first because I find it always give me a satisfactory answer.