J. A. Simpson

Fully revised and updated, this new sixth edition is the perfect guide for those studying biology either in high school or college. The Dictionary offers more than 5,500 clear and concise entries, including more than 300 entries new to this edition. It provides comprehensive coverage of biology, biophysics, and biochemistry, includes biographical entries on key scientists, and features highlighted entries on important topics such as bioinformatics, genomics, molecular evolution, and protein structure. The new edition also features web links accessed via a companion website, featuring additional information that is regularly updated to ensure that it stays fresh. The volume also has many appendices, including a list of useful web sites, mass extinctions of species, and SI units, plus entirely new appendices on model organisms and their genomes and on Nobel prizewinners. - Publisher.

Complete text reproduced micrographically.

"What do you call the part of a dog's back it can't scratch? Can you drink a glass of balderdash? And if, serendipitously, you find yourself in Serendip, then where exactly are you? The answers to all of these questions can be found in the Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive record of the English language. And there is no better guide to the dictionary's many wonderments, its quirks, and its quiddities than the former chief editor of the OED, John Simpson. John spent almost four decades of his life immersed in the intricacies of our language, and guides us through its history with charmingly laconic wit. In The Word Detective, an intensely personal memoir and a joyful celebration of English, he weaves a story of how words come into being (and sometimes disappear), how cultures shape the language we use, and how we cope when words fail us. Throughout, he enlivens his narrative with lively excavations and investigations of individual words-from deadline to online and back to 101 (yes, it's a word)-all the while reminding us that the seemingly mundane words (can you name the four different meanings of ma?) are often the most interesting ones. A brilliant expedition through the world of words, The Word Detective will delight, inspire, and educate any lover of language"--

Contains the definitions and origins of most of the words in the English language including quotations showing their range of meanings from the time they entered the language to the present. Includes the complete text of the 20-volume second edition, together with its Addition Series.

"Drawing on the unique resources of the Oxford English Dictionary, Stone the Crows features over 6,000 slang words and expressions, from the British beer goggles, through the American cockamamie, to the Australian gigglehouse. This collection contains old favourites as well as the very latest slang terms. In addition to the A-Z entries, the book contains a comprehensive thematic index, details of origins, dates of first printed use, and thousands of illustrative quotations from famous names including John Lennon and Woody Allen."--Jacket.

If you're a cube when it comes to def jam, if you know zilch about five-finger discounts, or are gob-smacked by the meeja, then read on ... Over 5,000 twentieth-century slang words and phrases are presented from throughout the English-speaking world. Each headword is defined, with the date of its first appearance in print, while thousands of quotations - from authors as diverse as John Lennon, Raymond Chandler, Germaine Greer, and Woody Allen - illustrate the use of slang words and senses. Coverage ranges in date from the very earliest slang still in use (gob, 1550) to contemporary coinages (gob-struck, 1988), and embraces the English-speaking world, with examples from - among others - Britain (goggle-box, wazzock, steaming, wide boy), America (grody, baglady, dweeb, home-boy), and Australia (nasho, chunder, crim, illywhacker). The authors have drawn on the Oxford English Dictionary and its unpublished files, and the dictionary contains some 500 words which have not previously appeared in the OED.

A compilation of familiar quotations arranged alphabetically by author. Indexed by key words.