Collins English Dictionary (7th ed.)

This is a complete and unabridged new edition (the 7th) of Collins English Dictionary, hardback and 1,880 pages … and awfully heavy. My initial concerns were putting my back out whilst reviewing it and also how much such a weighty tome would be used in libraries, and by individuals. The next impression was that this includes many neologisms, some of which I suspect will not be in common parlance when the next edition appears. However, the English language is not dictated by dictionaries, rather dictionaries reflect the state of the English language.

The new input has been driven by Collins admirable Word Exchange web site in which English users the world over have the opportunity to have their say in the way the language is represented. Although Collins dictionaries are often the best ones on the market, they still rather suffer in the intellectual shadow of the Oxford English Dictionary. Collins strengths lie in their emphasis on living English and they certainly play up to these strengths, as they should do.

It is certainly a global English dictionary and Collins employ lexicographers and consultants in Australia, Canada, Africa, Southeast Asia and the UK. In addition, specialist advisers have continued to provide new terms from science and technology and other specialist fields.

This latest edition has a different typeface too and I am not at all convinced that this is a significant improvement as I found the definitions somewhat difficult to read after the bold word, although this is a problem with all comprehensive, general hard copy dictionaries. The aesthetics and often the ease‐of‐use of hardcopy still beat online dictionaries hands down.

Having worked in a range of academic institutions it is blazingly obvious that many students, and some teaching staff, are now just too lazy to use dictionaries and would rather hazard a guess or rely on a cursory spellchecker. This issue is an integral element in the debate about the drastically falling standards of written English apparent from school children to university students. How a huge and quite unappealing, yet essential, volume such as this can contribute to the standards of literacy is more difficult to assess. Information literacy must include emphasis on spelling and the correct use of words, and it must be reinforced at every level because what is being taught in schools at Key Stage 3 is forgotten or overlooked by the Key Stage 4, and higher, pressures of examinations. If examination marks reverted to their allowance for spelling, punctuation and grammar, then that, in these days of examination result‐led education, might make educators and learners sit up, but I doubt much else would.

However, this volume does include some jaw‐dropping neologisms among its 1500 new words which might make the dictionary more attractive to some! These include tribal, offensive, violent and obscene words. Whatever our opinions on the use of such words, they do reflect a part of what purports to be common parlance English today. So, of course, chav appears alongside skater, ned, ASBO, happy slapping, mutha, scrote et al. Collins seem to revel in these offensive new words, rather than academically and linguistically justifying their, albeit usually correct, inclusion.

The layout of the dictionary is adequate, apart from the font changes which were unnecessary and the fact that a dictionary which needs to include so many words will never be able to have a space between entries which would make them as appealing as, say, school dictionaries are. A thumb index might have been useful for a book of this size, although the guides at the top of each page are good, with first and last words for each page in bold letters.

Each headword is in bold and is selectively followed where appropriate by a pronunciation guide (a pronunciation key is provided and the International Phonetic Alphabet is used). The grammatical part of speech is indicated in italic abbreviations for adjectives (adj), adverbs (adv), conjunctions (conj), interjections (interj), nouns (n), prepositions (prep), pronouns (pron) and verbs (vb). There are also usage labels (including slang, informal, taboo, offensive, derogatory, not standard, archaic and obsolete) as well as subject field labels and regional and national labels. The meanings of each word are given in order of common usage. The main entry is always given as the most common spelling, although there are good cross references so that deoxyribonucleic acid cross‐refers to DNA, where the full explanation is given. The etymology of most headwords is given in square brackets towards the end of each entry and this includes the date of the first known occurrence of a word in English.

Every single library and information service in all sectors should feel obliged to provide a decent comprehensive English dictionary. Spellchecking and online dictionaries are just not as reliable as, and the authenticity is more open to question than, a well established hardcopy dictionary. The very act of using a dictionary is a skill that is endangered (and its demise is endangering the written English language as phonetically, but incorrectly, spelled words become increasingly acceptable) and can often provide diversionary pleasures as the unexpected is found on exploration! This latest edition Collins dictionary is one of these decent and authoritative dictionaries and its strengths lie in its comprehensiveness, its reputation and, perhaps most of all, in its modernity.