Macmillan Essential Dictionary Resource Site | About the Macmillan Essential Dictionary

The Macmillan Essential Dictionary is the second of a series of new learners' dictionaries from Macmillan.The Macmillan English Dictionary, published in January 2002, was written for learners of English who are at a good intermediate to advanced level. Within a year, it had become the best-selling advanced learner's dictionary, and the success of this first year was crowned with the prestigious Duke of Edinburgh English-Speaking Union English Language Book Award. In March 2004, the full package of Macmillan English Dictionary products won the British Council Innovation Awards.

The Macmillan Essential Dictionary followed on in the footsteps of its pioneering elder brother, in April 2003, in two editions: one with definitions written in British English and the other with definitions written in American English. You’ll need to choose the variety that is more appropriate for you. But you’ll find that both editions include a great deal of the other variety – so the British edition covers American English and the American edition covers British English.

In the same way as the Macmillan English Dictionary, the Macmillan Essential Dictionary clearly makes the distinction between those words that people need to use all the time in English, and those words that they do not use very often. We believe that learners of English should also be using these very common words, and so we have printed them in red in the dictionary. There are 3,500 red words, which represent the words that you are likely to need for reading, listening, writing or speaking. They are dealt with in the dictionary in quite a lot of detail, with useful up-to-date information given about how the words are used, what other words are often used with them, words that are in the same word family, and alternative words you can use to say the same thing. All the other words are printed in black, and they are dealt with in less detail, as you will need to use them less often and will normally come across them when you are reading English. This policy allows us to include more words overall.

Click here to see all the other interesting features we have built into the dictionary for you.

In addition to the dictionary, there is a CD-ROM, which includes the whole of the dictionary plus much more. For example, all the words in the dictionary have been recorded by both British and American speakers, and so you can hear them all pronounced in both varieties. You can also record your own pronunciations, and compare them with those on the CD-ROM. If you know how a word is pronounced, but do not know how it is spelled, you can type in the phonetic symbols, and find the spelling. If you are interested in a particular subject, for example the Internet, you can get a list of all the words that refer to the Internet in their definitions; or you can get all the examples which include the word Internet.