The back cover blurb tells us that the Longman Advanced American Dictionary is “the dictionary for academic success” and has “everything you need to succeed”, namely: 185,000 words, and phrases and meanings; 73,000 natural examples (which) show words in context; (the facility to) expand your vocabulary (by) using the thesaurus boxes; 5,000 etymologies (to) help you learn the origin of words; and 10,000 synonyms and antonyms (forgive me for supplying the grammar!). I do not question these impressive statistics, but this is a difficult dictionary to use and I suggest that anyone who can understand how to use it will have already have achieved academic success! Forgive my sarcasm, but students faced with this 2,000‐page monster will need no little measure of “stickability” to understand what it was they wanted.
To illustrate: the header word “beat1” is in pink type, but “beat2” and “beat3” are in blue type. Why? Buried in the notes to the Key to the Dictionary (p. ix) I read it is because it is one of the 3,000 most frequent words in spoken and written English (“this shows you the important words you need to know”). The significance of the blue type is not given, but I guess it is to highlight the headwords rather than to indicate the unimportant words you do not need to know! Also unexplained is the meaning of the superscript number following the headwords. They are not, as I first suspected, to indicate three different meanings. “If a word has more than one meaning, each meaning is shown by a number in dark type” (not pink, blue or superscript!). “Beat1” has 31 meanings, “beat2” has five, and “beat3” just one (“very tired”). In addition, between the 31st meaning of “beat1” and “beat2”, comes “beat your breast”, and between “beat2” and “beat3” come “beat down”, “beat off”, “beat out” and “beat up”. I have no quibble with the meanings themselves, just with the barely intelligible cryptic presentation. Another example is the frequent “sb at sth”, as in “beat sb at sth” (= beat somebody at something). After “beat1” comes “/bit/” followed by “S1” in a little box and “W1” in another little box. The “/bit/” relates, I think, to pronunciation, though I do not pronounce beat like bit, so I may have misunderstood something here. There is a pronunciation table inside the front cover, but the modified International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) used here is hard to follow and will surely be a “turn‐off” for most of the dictionary's potential users. The “S1” and “W1” indicate that “beat1” is one of the 1,000 most frequent words in both spoken and written English. Other words are designated “S2”, “S3”, “W2” and “W3”, indicating the second and third thousands. More than that I cannot say since I could find no further explanation or reference to any source document. I did find the “Longman American Definition Vocabulary” on the blue pages at the end of the dictionary. These are words used to define the words in the dictionary itself – “carefully chosen after a thorough study of the well‐known frequency lists of English words”. Studied by whom and what these frequency lists are, we are not told.
These end pages feature the seemingly obligatory tables of US states, their capitals and postal abbreviations, weights and measures, and other information such as lists of irregular verbs, grammar codes (whatever they are) and geographical names. There are pink and blue‐edged pages in a separately numbered sequence in the middle of the dictionary, between “‐ize” and “J1”, the tenth letter of the English alphabet and “J2”, the written abbreviation of “joule”. The 22 pink‐edged pages give Language Notes. They are followed by 14 “full page illustrations” – in fact, 14 pages full of illustrations, which is hardly the same thing! Then come 24 blue‐edged pages that form a Writing Guide. The dictionary includes coloured pictures to assist understanding; encyclopedia information such as biographical details of famous people (e.g. Co‐ody, William – 1846‐1917, Buffalo Bill, etc.); thesaurus boxes; and a CD‐ROM. This is The Longman American e‐Tutor (“Prepare for exam success with interactive practical exercise”. “Your personal Study Center helps to improve your reading, writing, listening and speaking skills”. “Improve your pronunciation”. “12,000 example sentences”.).
One thing had puzzled me from the outset, and that was the use of [C] and [U] in the majority of the entries. I hunted high and low to find what they stood for, without success, and had long given up the search. Then, on page 1851, I found the answer! [C]ountable and [U]ncountable. Of course! How could I have been so stupid! Pity the key was not on page i!
In spite of my criticisms, there are some excellent features about his dictionary. The spacing of the syllables of the headwords to indicate pronunciation is well done (e.g. Fa‐ber‐gé); the definitions are succinct and intelligible; the examples illustrating usage are good; and the modern vocabulary is impressive (e.g. goof, patsy, snake oil). If only the dictionary had stopped there! There are also the customary parts of speech, etymologies, and the “codes” or “register” to indicate the context in which a word is customarily used, e.g. “AC” = academic (I was disconcerted to find “fab” (= extremely good) was “old‐fashioned”!). This “New edition” is, in fact, the second edition, the first edition was published in 2000 and reprinted in 2005 (I think – nothing in this dictionary is clear!). It is similar in style and content to the Longman Exams Dictionary (RR 2006/424) though many of the “aids” there are omitted here. The strictures made there, however, “messy and over‐complicated”, “over‐elaborate” and “patronizing” apply here also. The dictionary is also rather unwieldy to hold. Give it a miss.
