Author(s): J. M. Hughes (Editor); P. A. Michell (Editor); W. S. Ramson (Editor)

Languages and Reference

This is a compact, authoritative dictionary designed especially for Australian users. Like other one-volume dictionaries it presents a selection, from the vast store of international usage, of those words which are current and relevant in the Australian context. But it does this with an authority which no other Australian dictionary can claim. This authority has two bases, the international and the Australian. The dictionary's international authority is announced in the use of the name Oxford; its Australian authority comes from its having been fully edited at the Australian National Dictionary Centre in Canberra. Through Oxford (Australia's largest reference publishers) its editors had access to the most comprehensive database of the English language as it is used world-wide - the same database as that which forms the twenty-volume Oxford English Dictionary - and to the most recent distillation of this in the latest edition of the pace-setting Concise Oxford Dictionary. Through the Centre the dictionary's editors had access to the largest citation database of Australian English: that which forms the Australian National Dictionary. The Australian Concise Oxford Dictionary is the first product of this lineage and its publication heralds a new era in Australian lexicography. Special features include: * Completely revised Australian pronunciations, represented in IPA notation; * up-to-date Australian spellings and their alternatives; * full coverage of historical areas of Australian English - convict terms, the language of the gold rushes, exploration, settlement etc.; * up-to-date coverage of scientific and technological terminology, especially of computer terminology; * full and reliable definitions and etymologies for words of Aboriginal origin, Aboriginal English words, etc.