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. 1. A long plank balanced on a central fulcrum so that with a person riding on each end, one end goes up as the other goes down. Also called regionally dandle, dandle board, teedle board, teeter, teeterboard, teeter-totter, tilt1, tilting board. 2. The act or game of riding a seesaw. 3. A back-and-forth or up-and-down movement. 4. An action or process in which something repeatedly changes from one condition or situation to another: the seesaw in temperatures. intr.v. see·sawed, see·saw·ing, see·saws 1. To play on a seesaw. 2. To move back and forth or up and down. 3. To change back and forth from one condition or situation to another: The lead seesawed for much of the tennis match. [Reduplication of SAW1.] Our Living Language The seesaw is known regionally by many names. In southeast New England it is called a tilt or a tilting board. Speakers in northeast Massachusetts call it a teedle board, and around Narragansett Bay it is often called a dandle or dandle board. Teeter or teeterboard is used more generally in the northeast United States, while teeter-totter, probably the most common term after seesaw, is used across the inland northern states and westward to the West Coast. Both seesaw (from the verb saw) and teeter-totter (from teeter, as in to teeter on the edge) demonstrate the linguistic process called reduplication, where a word or syllable is doubled, often with a different vowel. Reduplication is typical of words that indicate repeated activity, such as riding up and down on a seesaw. |
The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition copyright ©2022 by HarperCollins Publishers. All rights reserved.
