More on Merriam-Webster Dictionaries

I happened to see a Merriam-Webster Dictionary on my neighboring colleague's desk. I borrowed it and browsed a few pages. After some search on the web, I finally got to know the Merriam-Webster dictionaries family. I will talk about The Merriam-Webster Dictionary, The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary and The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary.

The Merriam-Webster Dictionary

Merriam-Webster Dictionary in paperback.

The paperback version turns out to be a heavily abridged one. It is the compactest one. The cover says it is based on the Collegiate Dictionary. I take the definition of the word consign here:

vb. 1 : ENTRUST, COMMIT 2 : to deliver formally 3 : to send (goods) to an agent for sale --- consignee \ˌkän-sə-ˈnē, -ˌsī-; kən-ˌsī-\   n --- consignor \ˌkän-sə-ˈnȯr-ˌ -sī-; kən-ˌsī-\  n

The definitions are to be compared with those in the other two dictionaries. On this book's Amazon page, we can see its page numbers and dimensions, which can also be compared with the other two dictionaries.

The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary

In the last post I compared Dictionary.com with Merriam-Webster.com. I prefer the former.

In fact, the free contents on M-W.com, which I think are not very complete, are from Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary. They are essentially the same dictionary.

How do I know this? I signed up the 14-day free-trial of the Unabridged Dictionary, which has definitions from the Collegiate Dictionary as well as the Unabridged Dictionary. The definition in the Collegiate Dictionary are the same with the definitions from M-W.com website. Also, Wikipedia says the same thing. From its Amazon page we can see its page numbers and dimensions are bigger than Merriam-Webster Dictionary.

Definition in the Collegiate Dictionary. This is the
same with the definition from M-W.com free online dictionary.

The Merriam-Webster Unabridged Dictionary

I referred to the Unabridged Dictionary in the last post, nevertheless I did not know what on earth is this version. Now I have a 14-days free-trial of it. The definitions of the same word consign in the Unabridged Dictionary are more detailed and complemented with example sentences.

Definition in the Unabridged Dictionary.

The respective paperback version is also found on Amazon. It has more than 2000 pages and is the largest among the three.

Conclusion

It is great if you can access the Unabridged Dictionary. For free dictionaries, I still prefer Dictionary.com to M-W.com and the Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary, which is the opinion in my last post.

You can go to this Wikipedia page to get more details of the Merriam-Webster dictionaries.