Péter's Digital Reference Shelf
November 1999

American Heritage Dictionary Deluxe

URL: http://www.lycos.com/reference
Publisher: Lycos, Inc.
Examined: October 16-21, 1999
Price: Free

In 1962 the founder and president of the American Heritage Company spared no words to smear the management of Merriam-Webster Inc. and, of course, Webster's Third New International Dictionary in his effort to carry out a hostile takeover of the company. Stockholders did not buy his diatribes and resented his book-burning fervor to take Webster's Third out of print, so he changed strategy. He wanted to create a new unabridged dictionary to dethrone Webster's Third, but after looking at the bottom line of the cost estimate he realized that he could talk the talk but couldn't walk the walk and settled for a smaller desk dictionary.

Seven years later the American Heritage Dictionary (AHD) was published by Houghton-Mifflin and it won the hearts of many dictionary users — including this author's — with its excellent typographical design and many photographs and drawings. As had other dictionaries, it also invoked the wrath of many critics for including obscene words. Others criticized the Usage Panel that was supposed to vote on words that were deemed problematic, like the use of "contact" or "critique" as verbs. I think of the Usage Panel (overwhelmingly made up of elderly white males from the East Coast) as the Politburo of the Soviet Union at the height of Soviet gerontocracy. This is not only because of its composition (average age 68 years, 11% women), but also because the questionnaires that were fed to the panel were full of loaded questions. No wonder 82% of the panel members found the use of "access" as a verb unacceptable. After the hysterical attacks against Webster's Third in 1961 — stemming mostly from ignorance and ultraconservatism — by the New York Times and the Atlantic, in 1969 it was American Heritage's turn to be on the receiving end of press reviews that both lauded and attacked the new features.

Oddly, it is not easy to find this attractive dictionary on the Web. The Web site of Houghton-Mifflin does not provide any clue. Surprisingly, not even the best directories listed it (as of National Dictionary Day, October 16), even though it has been available since early 1999 on the Web. Yahoo does not list it, neither does Snap, Excite or Netscape's Open Directory. The Britannica Internet Guide does not include it in its select resources. (This may have something to do with the fact that Britannica is the parent company of Merriam-Webster Inc. I could understand that Britannica does not want to give publicity to AHD. I was never very cooperative when approached at parties for my friend's phone number.) Special directories about dictionaries and ready reference sources don't seem to be aware of AHD. The excellent Web of Online Dictionaries that links to 800 dictionaries does not have an entry for this gem. The OneLook Dictionaries Web site that searches 583 dictionaries on the Web does not include AHD.

Fear not, dear reader, this digital reference shelf presents a review that will make you want to visit there yourself. "There" is the Lycos reference subsection, where the American Heritage Dictionary appears along with four dictionaries under the incorrect heading of "Search Directories" instead of "Dictionaries". It is odd in this marketplace ridden by a famous and prolonged litigation about trade dress and trade mark, that the AHD logo does not appear anywhere. Also, Lycos uses the adjective Deluxe Edition, which I have not seen in the print or CD-ROM versions of this dictionary. Perhaps it is the colloquial equivalent of referring to the complete dictionary (200,000 main entries) to set it apart from the College edition (185,000 main entries ) or the much smaller paperback edition (55,000 main entries). More about the complete dictionary later.

The simple AHD query box lets you enter the word or phrase you want to look up and presents the first 20 words of the definition of the entry word(s) that meet your term. In case there is no match on the entry word level for the query, the software offers the option to extend the search, which is a great asset. You can find illustrative quotations by the name of the author (Shakespeare) but not by the title of the work (Romeo and Juliet), which is not identified in the quotes. You can find the word in other definitions, synonym notes, quotations, or word histories. You may easily collect words that are labeled as slang or archaic or offensive. Because it is a free text search rather than restricted to specific fields, occasionally you will find a cuckoo's egg in the result list, like "breakthrough" for the search term "offensive," which includes the word "offensive" as a noun but not as the usage label "offensive".

If the AHD does not yield any result you may try the other dictionaries licenced by Lycos that work exactly the same way, such as the Wall Street Words dictionary. Unfortunately, the other sources can be searched only one by one. It adds insult to injury that the word needs to be retyped in the query cell because its content is erased between these searches.

AHD found definitions for fewer words than the other desk dictionaries that I tested. This is surprising, as it is the digital version of the third edition of 1992 and obviously was not updated to include such new terms as "ethnic cleansing," "boy toy," "trophy wife," "ebonics," or "phat" that one or more of the other dictionaries had a definition for.

The result of a search of AHD is displayed by showing the main entry word or phrase or the name of the person and the first 25 words from the definition. This is very efficient for determining which one(s) to click on for the entire article, but it could be improved. The free text search can yield quite a number of hits. In such cases a maximum of ten terms with excerpts are displayed. The excerpt is always the first 25 words of the entry. It would be more useful to offer a choice to display the search term in context as the excerpt. For example, by displaying a maximum of 12 words before and a maximun of 12 words after the search term, the user would know the context immediately. This is, by the way, the DIALOG system's KWIC (keyword in context) format. It took me about ten minutes and 50 clicks to eyeball the result list of entries that were retrieved for the query "usage notes," i.e. the definitions that had usage notes.

The order of the items on the hit list is enigmatic. It is not alphabetic and not apparently relevance-ranked. The first item for the above search was "critique" and the last one was "call." To do full text searches, it would also be useful to highlight the search term when the full record is displayed. Sometimes the search term is buried within the sumptuous synonym paragraphs and doesn't stand out immediately. It would also be welcome to have an option to display a vertically tight list of the words or phrases to scan them quickly in case a large number of hits is returned.

The entries in AHD are excellent, with clear definitions that don't lack a healthy amount of humor, relatively simple pronunciation, inflected forms, and well-separated senses. The functional, temporal and regional notes are appropriately assigned to the senses of the word. The regional notes are particularly well-written.

The phrasal verbs and the idioms are well presented and often illustrated with made-up sample sentences. Quotations are often given from contemporary sources such as magazines and newspapers, and also from classic authors — a big improvement from the first edition that relied mostly on sentences made up by the editors. Unfortunately, the title of the specific work is not identified, nor is the date.

The etymology notes are adequate, and the word histories are informative and entertaining. Undergraduates can laugh with their friends over the origin of fizzle. The sample quote from the Wall Street Journal for futz will exonerate the writer from charges of using foul language.

The typography in AHD is very good (except for the occasional run-ons and the etymons) and so is the layout. In some cases the vertical layout could be tightened to make the record look less dangling and to spare a click or two. Perhaps the text frame could be extended to a little more than 60 characters to accommodate the full entry on a single screen. In spite of my preference for reducing the number of screens required to view an entire record, I would like to see the spelled-out version of abbreviations for the functional labels of the words — like "transitive verb" instead of "verb. tr" and "v. intr." These abbreviations, which AHD so proudly eliminated in the print version, must not creep back into the digital one, and the spelled-out version often would not waste any screen space.

The biographical entries provide some hints that the file licensed by Lycos is the one used for the 1996 print version of AHD. Death dates for prominent people end in 1996, so George Burns, Ella Fitzgerald and Francois Mitterand are reported dead, but Frank Sinatra, Joe DiMaggio and King Hussein are not. For an English dictionary this is a smaller problem than for a biographical dictionary or an encyclopedia.

This dictionary seems to be the equivalent of the 1996 print version of the complete American Heritage Dictionary. My only big disappointment with this excellent source is that it has none of the illustrations that made the printed dictionary so popular. The reason may be the that permission for the use of the illustrations only served for the print version. At any rate, the see references to illustrations should be removed from this version. To poke fun at one of the verbs most criticized by the American Heritage Usage Panel: hopefully, more users will access this outstanding resource when all the major Web subject directories include AHD to alert users of its existence.