Average Rating: 
Rating: - Best Print Dictionary I've Ever Used!
I also have the Oxford dictionary, but from what I've seen of that, it's more a dictionary of BRITISH English than American English. For AMERICAN English, I don't believe the Merriam-Webster's Collegiate can be beaten among the print dictionaries.
I like knowing the origins of words, and this dictionary's etymologies, albeit brief, are very concise and informative. For my money, this is the only print dictionary you'll ever need. Highly recommended!
Rating: - A very good dictionary, though still a bit quirky
I just got my Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, Eleventh Edition from Amazon and am looking forward to getting to know it better. Past editions of the Collegiate have been in many ways excellent, expecially in the clear, crisp definitions and well-researched albeit brief etymologies. It appears that this edition is no exception.My summary impression is that this is a dictionary well worth buying, perhaps the best desk dictionary one can find. The Collegiates, including this one, have been bit quirky, especially as regards pronuncation. For example, this dictionary has a strange relationaship with the schwa sound. In previous editions thre were many apparently inadvertent switches between the schwa (last vowel sound in "circus") and the short u sound (as in "but"). In this edition, however, there are four different sounds (including the short u) that are indicated by easily confusible variants of the schwa symbol. In addition, the "a" vowels in marry and Mary -- distinguished by many mainstream speakers of American English -- are left undifferentiated, as in previous editions. As in previous editions, a key to pronunciation symbols is provided on each recto page. Unfortunately, this little list omits perhaps 2/3 of the list of pronunciation symbols that fill one page of the front matter (making it hard to find each time you need it). (If I were king of Merriam-Webster, I'd put the full pronunciation key where it belongs: on the inside front or back covers, or both.) Another frustrating aspect for most users *was* that at least in the Tenth Edition, the oldest and often least-used definition of a word was listed first, causing your search for a certain definition usually to be more work. It *appears* that this practice has now been abandoned with the Eleventh Edition, though I haven't found any explicit reference to it in the explanatory notes. If so, this will noticeably improve the ease of using this book. Printing-wise, it appears that the darkness of the type has deepened in the Eleventh Edition (although this may just indicate where in a given press run my copy happened to come from). This makes my 11th Ed. distinctly easier to read than my 10th Ed. In addition, the main entries are now in sans-serif type. This isn't necessarily an aesthetic improvement, but far more important is that it makes finding your word easier on the eyes. Unfortunately, as with the previous edition, the inner margins are too narrow, forcing one to read the right side of a left-hand page and the left side of a right-hand page from paper that is curving into the crease in the middle of the book; almost nothing short of breaking the binding is likely to counteract this problem. A personal prejudice I have (that you may not share) is that I believe a dictionary owes its readers more than just a description of how language is currently used. (Some of current usage is in my opinion poor, and a dictionary is the right place to try to stem the tide of poor usage instead of merely describing it.) The Eleventh Edition, like recent previous ones, has many Usage Notes at the end of an entry. I find these to be by and large too permissive, giving excuses for much questionable usage (while prudently reminding the reader that if they go ahead and employ some usages that M-W deems perfectly acceptable, they may be in for some criticism). For example, one usage note supports the use of "literally" to mean "virtually". Another usage note supports the pronunciation of "nuclear" as "nucular" (lamely trotting out the fact that it has been used that way by members of many respected professions, including U.S. members of congress and even two U.S. presidents!!!!!). Another drawback of this book for many is the massive inclusion of technical words like chemical names, and especially the names of a huge variety of plants and animals. This is all well and good in itself, of course. But these words are in most cases useful only to specialists in those fields, and given the limited space available, must necessarily drive out other candidates for inclusion that would be useful to a far larger number of readers...
Rating:  - weak dictionary
This dictionary has been blown away by the Shorter Oxford Dictionary of English.
Also online dictionaries are faster to lookup words than these dictionaries. With ubiquitous Internet access, a dictionary like this is not needed.
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