The American Heritage dictionary

What Hacker News says

1. dmckeonSep 2023
   The American Heritage dictionary deserves a mention, not only for its extensive usage panels of writers, but for its practice of putting the most current meanings first, so that the dread “Webster’s defines X as…” is not followed by some antique meaning from the 1700s, but by a current meaning. The OED has no equal, of course, but for a dictionary that one can lift with one hand and read without a magnifier, the AHD is a high value tool.
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2. jbullock35Mar 2022
   I'm a professor. I write a lot, and I use Bookshelf 1996 mainly for the third edition of the American Heritage Dictionary, which is great. The interface is better than the interface for the iOS app.

   You can get the 4th edition for free at https://ahdictionary.com, and it's good. I'm just old-fashioned enough to dislike some of the changes that they made between the third and fourth editions.

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3. jquinbyApr 2018
   Thinking in Systems by Donella Meadows

   Getting to Yes by Roger Fisher and William Ury

   ARRL Handbook for Radio Communications

   ARRL Antenna Book

   American Heritage Dictionary, 5th Ed.

   Bible/Lectionary, Breviary, and Catechism

   If fiction counts, I will probably never delete Flatland or the complete Joseph Conrad from my Kindle.

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4. cobralibreNov 2012
   The short, glib answer is that if you have to ask why you would want to pay for a dictionary, then you aren't the kind of person who needs to pay for a dictionary.

   The long answer is that good dictionaries, such as American Heritage Dictionary, the Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and the OED itself, are produced by scholars and experts, guided by editorial panels comprised of scholars and experts, require a great deal of work to produce (the first edition of the OED took something like 71 years to complete!), and contain more data (i.e., more words and more definitions per word) and generally higher quality data than free dictionaries. You're probably willing to pay $50 for software that solves your problems, because you probably make software yourself, and you know that it costs money to create software; an analogy can be made here. But if a barebones dictionary works for you, then it works for you, and don't worry about it.

   So what is a good dictionary? Here's a tentative answer. A good dictionary provides pithy, useful definitions that reflect the words' differing meanings over time and differing contexts. Most good dictionaries also provide style and usage guidelines (e.g., "When should I use 'lie' and when should I use 'lay'?"), and a good dictionary will also provide a word's etymology. Many free dictionary apps use data from WordNet, which is an amazing resource, but its focus is on tagging words with taxonomic properties (sorry, a better phrase isn't coming to me right now) and defining the relationships between those words, all of which is very useful for general linguistics and NLP research. The quality of the definitions fall short, and you should be able to confirm this by comparing just about any WordNet definition to a definition from a good dictionary at your library.

   I was hoping to find a better example, but to give yourself an idea of the research problems that can be solved with a good dictionary, consider reading this brief student's guide to using the OED:

   http://www.rci.rutgers.edu/~wcd/oedguide.htm

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5. dryarzegMar 2026
   > Chrome itself is "a tool to download files from Google's servers."

   ...legitimately. While Google (I will reinforce: Google, not everyone) sees downloading of the videos and other content from the YouTube by third-party services as illegitimate because of YouTube's ToS. After all, they're making money from the YouTube Premium and "Download" option provided by it, so things like that are kinda expected to happen.

   And no, I don't agree that it's right. While I can understand the position of Google, the method they (allegedly) used here... Well... I don't even know what to say. That's plainly wrong, in my opinion. After all, "download" is defined as "To transfer (data or a program) from a central computer or website to a peripheral computer or device." by The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language (5th Edition), so when you just watch videos, you download them already, don't you? What about watching them in browser, somewhere in embed on some website? Does that constitute a legitimate client (I guess so, because most of embeds still use YouTube Player after all)? That just makes me laugh : )

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6. FerretFredDec 2025
   I went by the definition:

   misanthropic /mĭs″ən-thrŏp′ĭk, mĭz″-/ adjective

   Of, relating to, or characteristic of a misanthrope.

   Characterized by a hatred or mistrustful scorn for humankind.

   Hating or disliking mankind.

   The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, 5th Edition

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