The Shorter covers virtually every word or phrase in use in English--worldwide--since 1700. Drawing on the continuous research for The Oxford English Dictionary, each definition's changing meanings are followed throughout history and are illustrated by more than 83,000 quotations from some 7,000 authors.

• The world's most comprehensive, thorough, and up-to-date unabridged dictionary, The Shorter Oxford English Dictionary is an essential resource for every library.
  
• Each entry provides all the information you would expect from a leading unabridged dictionary:
  
• Identifies each word's various meanings, origins, part of speech, pronunciation (in the International Phonetic Alphabet).
  
• Combinations in which the word is often found.
  
• Cross-references to related words.
  
• More than 500,000 definitions.
  
• 83,000 quotations from 7,000 authors.
  
• 97,600 headwords.
  
• All words current in general English from 1700 to the present.