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 dish consisting of cooked lobster meat mixed with a cream sauce, put into a lobster shell, sprinkled with cheese, and browned. [Translation of French homard thermidor, so named in 1896 by M. Paillard, proprietor of the Parisian restaurant where Auguste Escoffier invented the dish around 1880, after Thermidor, a controversial 1891 play by Victorien Sardou, successfully revived in the 1896 season, whose story takes place at the time of the fall of Maximilien de Robespierre in the summer of 1794, from thermidor, the 11th month of the calendar used during the French Revolution (beginning July 19 and ending August 18 in the Gregorian calendar) : Greek thermē, heat; see THERM + Greek dōron, gift; see dō- in the Appendix of Indo-European roots.] |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
