This major new edition of 'Collins English Dictionary' provides the most comprehensive, wide-ranging and up-to-date coverage of today’s English. It also includes thousands of essential encyclopedic facts, and all this presented in a layout and design that ensures this wealth of information is easily accessible.

• Over 18,500 encyclopedic entries – people, places, concepts, institution, and movements, both past and present, clearly described, with the latest important facts.
• Usage notes newly compiled from evidence gathered in the bank of English, Collins unique language database. These new notes give details of past and present usage and advise on current best practice.
• Special interest subjects such as science, computing, the arts, business, education, religion and sport – all treated in depth. These have been comprehensively updated, drawing on the expertise of consultants in over 200 subject areas.
• Full etymologies show the century of the first known occurrence of the word English.
• Pronunciations adapted from the International Phonetic Alphabet.

“I always go to Collins first because I find it pleasantly up-to-date in recognizing new conventions in meaning, spelling and grammar.”
BAMBER GASCOIGNE

“I have never known a dictionary of such scope. The biographical entries are particularly useful. I would not be without it for anything”
PROFESSOR JOHN CAREY, MERTON COLLEGE, OXFORD

"I spend my working life with the Collins dictionary permanently open. It is, in its way, a masterpiece. On 'New Scientist'it is also a bible: we take all our spellings from it (with few exceptions)…The dictionary has managed to take advances in science in its stride.”
PETER WROBEL, 'NEW SCIENTIST'

“It is a stupendous achievement…the best and sanest interpretive dictionary I have ever seen.”
AUBERON WAUGH