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 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 new American Heritage Dictionary app is now available for iOS and Android.
The articles in our blog examine new words, revised definitions, interesting images from the fifth edition, discussions of usage, and more.
See word lists from the best-selling 100 Words Series!
Check out the Dictionary Society of North America at http://www.dictionarysociety.com
Swiss sculptor, painter, and surrealist who is best known for his elongated sculptures of human figures, such as Walking Man (1960). |
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:
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.
Copyright 2022 HarperCollins Publishers All rights reserved.
*This website is best viewed in Chrome, Firefox, Microsoft Edge, or Safari. Some characters in pronunciations and etymologies cannot be displayed properly in Internet Explorer.