Dictionary Reviews

I used this book to help my daughter learn a multitude of words in English and ASL signs when she was *very* young. Now that she's a preschooler, we're looking at it again from the Spanish perspective. And even though I am fluent in Spanish, I learned a *lot* of very specific vocaublary from this book (the names of all different kinds of vehicles and tools, for instance). I would recommend this book not only for parents of very young children, but also for students of the Spanish language of *any* age, as a vocabulary builder. If I were teaching a high school language class, I would want to copy pages out of this book, blank out the names, and challenge students to label each picture. What a great resource!!

Nice photos, not cheaply put together. Very clear.

This is a wonderfully colorful and fun book. My newborn is going to love learning Spanish with this book, so will I! The photographs are of real things -- not drawings, so children can relate directly to the words and pictures. It is a large and sturdy hardcover so it will withstand tiny fingers turning from page to page. If you buy only one book to introduce the language to your youngster, make it this one.

The index volume is excelent. Has sections for : english words, greek, bible - verses from Bible, hebrew words, extrabiblical literature.

The articles are clear, little words and many information and very well documented.
Also, the dictionary includes articles on other themes. Example : Theological Context : Infant Baptism - a very well done article.

This set is one of my most valuable resources for understanding the bredth and depth of New Testament words. The use of the Hebrew background, the Septuagint translation, the secular Greek usage as well as the New Testament context give a broad and complete basis for forming a more legitimate exegesis. The information is presented with enough detail to satisfy those with some knowledge of Greek or Hebrew, but is not so detailed as to make it unavailable to those lacking that background.

I was first acquainted with this work in college and have loved it ever since. The articles are thorough, but best of all, readable. I often pick up a volume looking up a specific word, then end up reading three or four articles because they are so interesting.

Ive used a lot of quotation books, but if i had to choose one, this would the one. Easy to use, sorted by topic and a great index (not as large as Bartlett's best still nice). Only thing thats kind of annoying is that the pages are on the upper inside corner of the page. It can be a bother when trying to flip to a page, but i got over it. All in all, i think this is the best quotation book out their, especially for the paperback price.

I have several quotation reference books, but this is the one that sits on my desk because it is by far my favorite. It contains a good mixture of recent, old, and ancient sayings, organized by themes. Many quotations are cross-referenced by theme, and others by similarity of structure ("Nothing succeeds like success," by Dumas, leads to "Nothing succeeds like excess" by Wilde.) There are over 20,000 quotes, meticulously referenced and often containing rich ancillary material. For instance, the famous "I'll have what she is having" is cited under the general theme of "Sex;" it notes that the author was Nora Ephron (1941--) in the film "When Sally Met Harry," 1989. Said by a woman diner to the waiter after observing Meg Ryan, at another table, acting out an orgasm.

While surfing the book I came across this quotation by Henry Kissinger, on the occasion of Nixon's nomination for president in 1968: "This man, of course, is a disaster. Now the Republican Party is a disaster. Fortunately, he can't be elected--or the whole country would be a disaster area." And this by Nixon, used frequently in reference to Kissinger: "My Jew boy," cited in Isaacson's "Kissinger: A Biography," 1992.

I'm sorry that not a single citation by Borges made the cut. At least his marvelous characterization of England and Argentina after the Falkland's war should have made it: "It was a fight of two bald men over a comb." The book also has its irritants: it contains no index of first words or fist lines. Thus, if one wants to know who said "Play it again, Sam," there is no easy way of finding out that NOBODY in Casablanca uttered those words. To find out, one must know that Casablance was written by Julius Epstein, look him up in the index, and there on page 530 you will see that it was Ilse (Ingrid Bergman) who said "Play it, Sam. Play "As Time Goes By." Finally, there is the irritant of the page numbers: instead of being centered (top or bottom) or on the outer margins of the pages, the numbers were placed in the inner margins, so that one cannot do a quick flicking of pages to find what we are looking for, but rather the book must be opened entirely to see then hidden page numbers near the center fold.

Still: the paperback edition of this thick volume is sturdy and will likely withstand rugged use. For under twenty bucks, it is a highly recommended bargain, and a useful reference book.

I have several dozen quote books in my personal library, including the usuals like Oxford and Bartlett's. Among big quote dictionaries, the Quotationary is the best. I wish it had a key word index, but even without one, I find this book more enjoyable and useful than the others. It truly is fun just to sit and read several pages at a time.

After reading dozens of quote books, I have seen ample proof that too many quote compilers spend more time copying each others' work than finding NEW material; this sometimes results in the same incorrect information showing up in several different books. The Quotationary is a very pleasant exception, and the source information has proven near-perfect in accuracy.

If you can only buy one major quote dictionary, this one is an outstanding choice.

Christina Kramer has done excellent work in producing this course book. It is unquestionably the best resource available--of course, my conscience compels me to admit that it's the only such resource available. The book is certainly well written and well-organized with a surprising flaw. Some native speakers of Macedonian have informed me that a couple of the Macedonian words in the book are mistranslated.

Is it too much to ask that a companion software disk be available for the Macintosh platform (it only works for the PC). There are a higher proportion of Mac users among language learners than there are among students of many other disciplines.

I used this book when I wanted to acquire a rudimentary knowledge of Macedonian. I found it very useful and well organized. I would recommend it to anyone else who needs to learn the language.

This text is an excellent one for anyone wishing to study the Macedonian language, which is a South Slavic language that is distinguished from other South Slavic languages by numerous grammatical features. The standard language was codified between approximately 1945 and 1950.

Having studied Macedonian for several years, having thoroughly surveyed the resources available for learning Macedonian, and having taught Macedonian for two years - one with, and one without Professor Kramer's textbook, I can say with complete confidence that this textbook is by far the most comprehensive one for anyone wishing to learn Macedonian (with or without a teacher!). The CD is excellent, too!

Haugen's Norsk-Engelsk Ordbok, available in every Norwegian bookstroe, is the best full-sized NE dictionary available, by far (mine is dogearred from use). Contains some dialect words, but too few.

This dictionary is as good as everyone else describes. I'm learning Norwegian, and it was definitly worth buying....
Later... I'm now fluent in Norwegian and still use this dictionary several times per week to better understand the nuances of new words. If you're interested in Norwegian, buy this dictionary.

This book is for looking up the English meanings to Norwegian words. I'm in the process of helping someone translate a book he has written in Norway, and this book is PERFECT for the job. It contains both bokmål & nynorsk words, which is especially helpful to me because the book I'm trying to translate has both languages in it, too. There are many cross-references and examples of usage that are helpful in finding the best English equivalents of Norwegian words. There have been some words that the author I'm working with cannot translate into English, and I've found about 99% of those problem-words in this book. I don't really know very much Norwegian (yet!), and what knowledge I have is entirely self-taught. But this dictionary has made it possible for me to successfully do a good translation from Norwegian to English with a fair amount of ease, and to learn a LOT in the process! I would recommend it VERY highly! :-)

Yes, this edition of the "Oxford Spanish Dictionary" did cut the mustard. It is a quality lexicon which Oxford University Press crafted with both care and patience.
A true descendant of the unabridged version, this healthy scion boasts of more than 170,000 headwords and phrases. Each entry was defined using contemporary translation. Whether you are an English speaker who is learning Spanish or vice-versa, this is a dependable tool to keep at hand. It counts: whether head or tail! And, it used the simplest illustrations to explain the meanings of its headwords.
Almost everything about this lexicon is positive. Given its reasonable price-tag, I did not find any serious offence to accuse it of. I will recommend it for both teachers and students. Professional translators and advanced-level teachers should go for the more versatile unabridged version.

Very, very good. I am bilingual, and I use this dictionary frequently. It is helpful that all of the reference information in the Spanish-English side is in Spanish, even if the same info appears in the English section (for instance, the section on "telephone language" in the English side appears as "telefonear" in the Spanish side. This just illustrates the completeness of this book.

If you are studying Spanish, I recommend that you purchase 3 books in addition to your curriculum: The Oxford Spanish Dictionary; A New Reference Grammar of Modern Spanish; and 501 Spanish Verbs, if you need that last one. The Oxford Spanish Dictionary is simply the definitive Spanish-English dictionary. The New Reference Grammar is invaluable for its completeness and incredible ease of use. The 501 Spanish Verbs can be helpful if you find yourself remembering things like "errar is irregular," but you just can't remember how.

I received the dictionary but the front cover does not look like the one showed in the internet site. In Short, I don't have the certainty that I received the dictionary which I pay for, but it is very complete and excellent anyway.

Jorge I. Rodríguez

In the foreword to G.H. Hardy's book A Mathematician's Apology, C.P. Snow tells an anecdote about Hardy and his collaborator Srinavasa Ramanujan. Hardy, perhaps the greatest number theorist of 20th century, took a taxi from London to the hospital at Putney where Ramanujan was dying of tuberculosis, Hardy noticed its number, 1729. Always inept about introducing a conversation, he entered the room where Ramanujan was lying in bed and, with scarcely a hello, blurted out his opinion about the taxi-cab number. It was, he declared, "rather a dull number," adding that he hoped that wasn't a bad omen. "No, Hardy! No, Hardy," said Ramanujan, "it is a very interesting number. It is the smallest number expressible as the sum of two cubes in two different ways."

Usually it takes a great deal of insight as well as considerable mathematical training to discover a yet unknown properties of some number. Only recognizing the beauty of a number pattern is much easier, though, especially with a friendly book like this one on hand. Wells, a long-time mathematics popularizer, has collected over 1000 numbers he considers interesting. Each of them is given a short explanation, often accompanied with a bibliographic reference. Celebrities among the numbers, like i, e or Pi, are given a more comprehensive treatment. Included are also several sequences, like Fibonacci's, Mersenne's, Fermat's, Carmichael's or Kaprekar's, each accompanied with its explanation. So are cyclic, amicable, untouchable or lucky numbers, and many more sequences you probably didn't know about.

While Wells' dictionary certainly gives the impression of a well-researched work, the list of numbers is by no means exhaustive. Anyone familiar with chaos theory will notice the absence of Feigenbaum constant; prime hunters would probably be interested in discussion on Woodall primes, Sophie-Germain primes, or Proth primes. But they are better off with Paulo Ribenboim's book on primes, anyway, while Wells' book, with its easily understandable explanations and accessible price is probably more suited for the "recreational mathematics" audience.

Everyone has that smart-alex relation who ruins Thanksgiving dinner by proving to every four year old in the room that they know more about math than they do. There are several ways to deal with such a pain in the posterior but the least likely to involve violence and police intervention is this book.

There are few 'wonderful' books ... you can count them with the fingers of one hand ... this is one.

The 'smart-alex' in the family would call this book: 'just a book on popular mathematics' thunder against it and not know 1/100 th of those facts within.

This is understandable number theory ... I guess you could call it that. It takes a number, some whole integers and some fractional or decimal parts and tells you about them. What they are made off, how to use the number, how it was used historically ... in other words it not dry like those awful wiggly things scraggy armed Mr. Enngenheimer [whomever] bored you with in high school

A concise yet complete reference work on numbers. Starts with i and moves to very large numbers. Also, where relevant, integer sequences and relata are discussed, for instance, the fibonacci sequence with the number 5 and so on and so forth. Additionally, there are some nice appendices listing various integer sequences, factors and such.

One of the best books I ever read. It changed the way I looked at the world. This man was a genious pure and simple. He also had great literary skills and a good sense of humour too.

This book is about man's freedom: freedom of thought,freedom of worship, freedom of the mental encroachments that make a man think he has the right to despise, oppress, kill a fellow human being because he is different. This book is about the power of Reason,about the absurdity of racism, war, greed and violence. Voltaire was the father of modern man. His errors were the errors of his age: his wisdom is the wisdom of the better part of man.

I'm not your typical philosophe reader, being a high school girl who usually prefers rap music to any sort of book, but there is something about voltaire's writings that appeals to me. NOt also are there some great statements made in this book, but clues to what life was like back in his day(such as in "love" the pox he is talking about is syphilis, which back then was associated with being immoral and in "astrology" he refers to his son dying in his cradle which was common then). His writing is witty, yet rational and even though sometimes difficult to interperet in modern language, if you read in serveral times and refer to a dictionary often you will understand what he is saying. Although some of the ariticles are irrelevent for today's world they are useful in historical context and there are many articles that are and always will be revelvent. Don't pass this book off as old fashioned, Voltaire never goes out of style.

I just started to study German language, this book has been very helpful to me, I can easly find words on any subject I want, also I can check the way the word has to be used, you will find diferent situations and how to use words. On the other hand, it's true it would be better if the had showed how the plurals are formed in every word. The Grammar review at the end of the book is also useful.

This is wonderful book for reviewing vocabulary. You should also know that French, Spanish, and Italian versions exist as well. The words covered are very helpful, especially for those who like to travel and need to know "easy" words that do not appear frequently in literature but do come up often in offices, stores, etc. Each entry offers a clear example of usage in its proper context. These books are so inexpensive, that it is worth taking one with you on a trip abroad, even if you end up abandoning it at the end to make more room in your suitcase for the books that you want to bring home.

It is usually the case that we look up the translation of a word we want to use in a dictionary. And then, it turns out to be not the word we've wanted, for the fact that the usage of it is somewhere different. Thematic approach was what was missing, and needed at the same time.

This book, however, has changed that. With its 40 chapters on different themes that include 'eating', 'clothing', 'actions and behaviors', 'feelings and instincts', this book offers german-learners everything they need to know for both learning German and living in Germany. Now, it is possible to walk into a shop and tell exactly what kind of a shoe you want, without any difficulty. The book offers another feature: example sentences that help you understand how you use the word. Therefore, every word can be used fluently during talking.

It is concise, and simple. Its small size allows for carrying in a bag. Any further grammatical complications,such as the plurals and different tenses of the verbs, unlike other reviewers, I think, would make the book difficult to use, and heavier to carry. This book can be used with an additional grammer companion, if very necessary. But, for the sole purpose of building vocabulary, the book is excellent. Yet, the grammar section at the end is quite satisfactory for quick referrals. I highly recommend 'Mastering German Vocabulary: A Thematic Approach' for all german-learners.

Outstanding book, both in the usage presented (contemporay as the title suggests) and the presentations of rhyming words by phonetics. Highest recommendations!!!

I use this book often to write poetry. It is helpful that it has many phrases that I would not usually think of on my own.

I bought this, not too long ago, for a friend of mine who is a high school English teacher. She raves about how helpful it is to her in class and how much the kids enjoy using it.

She has stressed its value so much that I now feel it is a must for my reference library. After all we've all been there, trying to find a rhymne for that odd word. It's like trying to think of a synonym something and there not a thesaurus to be found.