Dictionary of American English

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This article does not cite any references or sources. (July 2007) Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed.

A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles is a dictionary of terms appearing in English in the United States that was published in four volumes from 1938 to 1944. Intended to pick up where the Oxford English Dictionary left off, it was begun in 1925 by William A. Craigie. The first fascicle appeared in 1936 under the editorship of Craigie and James R. Hulbert.

The work was one of the sources for the Dictionary of Americanisms, c. 1952, prepared under the direction of Mitford Mathews. A similar, but unrelated modern work, the Dictionary of American Regional English, is presently being compiled to show dialect variation.