Continuing the description of books on words in the list from post 1, which you’ll find here.

Book 9: Collins English Dictionary

On with the info.

Hardback, 1786 pages, including four appendices; Weights and Measures, Chemical Elements, The Plant Kingdom, and The Animal Kingdom. It was published by HarperCollins in 1979; my version is the 1998 edition and I can’t recall what I paid for it. The current edition, published by Collins in 2018, has 2336 pages and is available for £22.94 at time of writing (RRP is £40.00)

The book is a standard dictionary with approximately 110,000 entries.

I bought this as an alternative to my preferred English dictionary, the SOED (of which more in a later post).

Opening randomly, at pages 882-883, I find listings from:

‘lean-to n, pl -tos. 1 a roof that has a single slope with its upper edge adjoining a wall or building. 2 a shed or outbuilding with such a roof.’

to

‘Leeds Castle n, a castle near Maidstone in Kent: the home of several medieval queens of England.’

The latter is an illustration of the ambiguity and confusion that often causes English language students frustration: Leeds is best known as a city in Yorkshire, a large northern county many miles from southern Kent, so the castle name appears a misnomer. However, a nearby village in Kent is also called Leeds. You’ll find a useful explanation here.

Students learning the English Language will find help on pronunciation here. And there’s a friendly group on Facebook for those studying the language, which you’ll find here.

Post 2 is here, post 3, post 4, post 5, post 6, post 7, post 8.