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Reference Resources

Features resources helpful for ready-reference questions: when you need quick access to facts, definitions, statistics, biographical information, maps, and so on.

Dictionaries & Thesauri

Dictionaries provide an alphabetical list of entries for words, with each word entry containing information about the word's form, pronunciation, meaning, history, and uses.

Thesauri provide a listing of synonyms or terms with near equivalent meaning.

This guide provides some recommendations for dictionaries and thesauri.

Recommended Dictionaries & Thesauri (Print and Ebooks)

New Advanced English-Chinese Dictionary

Main Collection (Third Floor)

Oxford American Writer's Thesaurus

Main Collection (Third Floor)

Oxford Dictionary of English

Electronic Resource

Oxford English Dictionary

Main Collection

Oxford English Dictionary (Oxford University Press) (VALE)

Authoritative resource on the English language, with information describing the meaning, tracing the history, and clarifying the pronunciation of more than 500,000 words in English.

Spanish-English, English-Spanish Dictionary and Phrasebook

Reference Collection (Second Floor)

Webster's New World College Dictionary

Main Collection (Third Floor)

Recommended Online Dictionary & Thesaurus Database

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Recommended Dictionary & Thesaurus Web Sites