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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.

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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.

The Panelists

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AMERICAN HERITAGE DICTIONARY APP

The new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.

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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.

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See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series!

Find out more!

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100 Words
100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know

For the newest title in the best-selling 100 Words series, the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries have carefully selected 100 words sure to be appreciated by language lovers, word mavens, and anyone who enjoys the variety and richness of the English language.

100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know is the perfect book for people who enjoy reading about words that have absorbing histories, great sounds, surprising but useful meanings or that have been used by famous writers throughout the history of English— words like cruciverbalist, fusty, and humuhumunukunukuapuaa. Additionally, 100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know features scores of quotations from classical and contemporary authors, from Henry James and Jane Austen to Sylvia Plath and William Golding.


Here is a complete list of the words in 100 Words Every Word Lover Should Know:

aesthetic or esthetic
alchemy
allegory
anachronism
anathema
bailiwick
beleaguered
bromide
cappuccino
caprice
caribou
chiasmus
chortle
coccyx
crescendo
cruciverbalist
desultory
detritus
didjeridoo or didgeridoo
ebullient
echelon
egregious
ephemeral
epicure
ersatz
facetious
fecundity
focaccia
fusty
gemütlichkeit
glossolalia
gossamer
gravamen
halcyon
hiatus
humuhumunukunukuapuaa   
iconoclast
insouciant
interloper
internecine
inveigle
jeremiad
juxtaposition
koan
laconic
lagniappe
leprechaun
litotes
lucubrate
magnanimous
maharajah or maharaja
malapropism
meretricious
mesmerize
meticulous
milieu
mitochondrion
nemesis
nictitate
nostrum
nudnik also nudnick
obloquy
obstreperous
oxymoron
palaver
pejorative
precarious
prestidigitation
preternatural
quark
quixotic
redolent
repugnant
rubric
sang-froid or sangfroid
sarcophagus
schwa
serendipity
sesquipedalian
shaman
sinecure
snakebit also snakebitten
soporific
succotash
susurration
syzygy
tantalize
theory
timbre
troglodyte
ullage
umlaut
vicissitude
visceral
voluptuous
wassail
xerophyte
yogh
Zeitgeist
zenith


Suggested Rules for the American Heritage® Team Spelling Bee

1. Teams shall consist of two or three members, one of whom will be designated captain and responsible for delivering the final spelling of the word.

2. The judge is in complete control of the spelling bee. His or her decision shall be final on all questions.

3. The Bee Master will pronounce the spelling word, read its definition, use it in a sentence (this is optional), and pronounce the word again. Once the Bee Master has completed the above, the team has forty-five seconds to talk and start to spell the word out loud.

4. Team members may confer as to the spelling of the word and may use pencil and paper to work it out, but the final spelling must be given by the team captain, unless he or she designates another teammate to answer.

5. Having started to spell a word, a team shall be given no opportunity to change a letter once it is pronounced out loud. Retracing is permitted, but the same letters once pronounced must be used in the same order.

6. No team shall be disqualified for failing to indicate a capital letter or pronunciation marks, such as hyphens or apostrophes.

7. Any team that fails to spell a word correctly must drop out of the contest and another word shall be given to the next team in line.

8. Any question relating to the spelling of a word must be referred to the judge immediately in writing. A team must make a protest before they receive their next word. When two teams remain, all protests must be made orally before the other team has started to spell the word given to them.

9. The procedure changes when the teams are reduced to two. As soon as one team misspells a word, the other team shall immediately be given an opportunity to spell it. If that team spells the word correctly, they shall be given another word. If that word is spelled correctly, they shall be declared the champions.

10. If one of the last two teams errs and the other team, after correcting the error, misspells the next word given to them, then the misspelled word shall be given to the first team for correction. If the first team corrects the error and spells the next word on the Bee Masters list correctly, they shall be declared the champion.

11. If both teams misspell the same word, both shall continue in the contest, and the team who misspelled the word first shall be given a new word.

12. All words are taken from lists compiled by American Heritage editors and can be found in The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition, which is the official spell-check dictionary for the bee.

Indo-European & Semitic Roots Appendices

    Thousands of entries in the dictionary include etymologies that trace their origins back to reconstructed proto-languages. You can obtain more information about these forms in our online appendices:

    Indo-European Roots

    Semitic Roots

    The Indo-European appendix covers nearly half of the Indo-European roots that have left their mark on English words. A more complete treatment of Indo-European roots and the English words derived from them is available in our Dictionary of Indo-European Roots.