HOW TO USE THE DICTIONARY
To look up an entry in The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, use the search window above. For best results, after typing in the word, click on the “Search” button instead of using the “enter” key.
Some compound words (like bus rapid transit, dog whistle, or identity theft) don’t appear on the drop-down list when you type them in the search bar. For best results with compound words, place a quotation mark before the compound word in the search window.
THE USAGE PANEL
The Usage Panel is a group of nearly 200 prominent scholars, creative writers, journalists, diplomats, and others in occupations requiring mastery of language. Annual surveys have gauged the acceptability of particular usages and grammatical constructions.
AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP
The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.
THE AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY BLOG
The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.
INTERESTED IN DICTIONARIES?
Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com
n. A person of American and Asian ancestry, especially one whose mother is Asian and whose father is American. [AMER(ICAN) + ASIAN.] Am′er·asian adj. Usage Note: Amerasian is not a synonym for either Asian American or Eurasian. The word dates to the early 1950s and has been used primarily with reference to children fathered in Asia by American servicemen. Since American servicemen are of varying backgrounds, there is no particular racial or ethnic connotation to Amerasian apart from the fact that one parent, generally the mother, is an ethnic Asian. In contrast, Asian American is typically used of a person whose parents are both ethnic Asians but who by birth or naturalization is an American citizen, while Eurasian designates a person of mixed Asian and European, or white, parentage. Though many Amerasians are, ethnically speaking, also Eurasians, in practice the two terms do not overlap very much, with Amerasian continuing to be restricted in usage to the historical context of the American military presence in East and Southeast Asia. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
