English Language and Literature

Free online version at Yahoo! Education, with over 200,000 entries featuring 10,000 new words and senses, 70,000 audio word pronunciations, 900 full-page color illustrations, language notes and word-root appendixes.

Fourth edition (2000).

Indexes over 300,000 articles in more than 25,000 books (anthologies and collections of essays) focusing on the humanities and social sciences, published in the U.S., Canada and Great Britain. Covers 300 books and 20 annual series each year. Includes links to full text of over 3,300 of the indexed books available in the HathiTrust Digital Library.

1900 -

Provides access to biographies, bibliographies, and critical analyses of authors from every age and literary discipline. Combines content from Gale Literary Databases: Contemporary Authors, Contemporary Literary Criticism Select, and Dictionary of Literary Biography.

Current editions of reference works.

Previous (1989) edition of the most complete and authoritative dictionary of the English language. Cites quotations demonstrating the use of each word defined to illustrate development of its usage and meaning.  (Superceded by the new, web-based, third edition of the OED, in which entries from this second edition are gradually being updated.)

Second edition of 1989 (updated 1996).