The Oxford Dictionary of Current English

I've been relying on this dictionary for almost a decade. It's now got dog ears and yellow pages, but it's still in one piece since I Scotch-taped both flaps when I first got it. I did a lot of research and side-to-side comparisons at my local bookstores before settling on this one; it was the clearest and most complete pocket dictionary I could find based on the list of esoteric words I fed it. That was over a decade ago...I am not sure about today, but I wouldn't be surprised if the current edition of this dictionary is still top dog in the pocket dictionary league.

OK. Here's the dilemma. I was born & raised in Britain, but I live & write in the United States ... & we're two nations divided by a common language. I'm writing about an autopsy & I describe it as the deceased's "last and best medical." What the heck is that, my wife asks? Using my "Webster's New World Dictionary," I determine that, indeed "medical" does not mean "physical" in the U.S. So now I'm wondering if I imagined the idea that anywhere people say someone "passed her medical with flying colors" or whatever. So I turn to my "Oxford Dictionary of Current English," where I learn that "medical" IS colloquially acceptable in Britain for what in the U.S. we'd call a "physical." All of which may seem obtuse, but as an expatriate Brit who's made his life in the States, it's great to have the resource of both a solid American dictionary & and an English one, especially if you work with words for a living ... and I really like the Oxford to cover the English side of things. It's very portable & yet also thorough (though I note the objections of other reviewers). I guess Oxford has always been a bit slow on allowing new words/usages, but it is THE authority on English English, as opposed to American English. ... Which also means you don't want this dictionary if you're writing solely for an American audience because it will steer you wrong in some areas & give you spellings not acceptable here. It's a great choice for Anglophiles, people writing for the U.K. market or doing business there, though. Reasonably priced, reasonably sized, usefully comprehensive. (My choice for the American side of things is "Webster's New World" mainly because it's the authority at most newspapers & I'm often writing within style guidelines set by newspapers).

This dictionary has about the size of a fat science fiction paperback novel and a little over thousand pages. It has 65,000 entries (and 75,000 definitions). So it's really packed. For how much it contains, it's still handy. Any dictionary with all the possible words is much thicker. For that other purpose I have the Webster's New Encyclopaedic Dictionary.