It provided guidance toward accuracy, precision, and grace in the use of English that intelligent people need and seek in a dictionary. It traced, whenever possible, the development of English words to their origins and keyed many to an Appendix of Indo-European Roots. And it presented complex lexical data in a typographically attractive design accented by thousands of photographs and line drawings in spa cious margins.

The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language, Third Edi tion, builds upon this distinguished, innovative foundation. The pages of the Third Edition, a lexicon of more than 200,000 boldface forms, hundreds of thousands of meanings, and nearly 4,000 pieces of art, reflect the rich and varied texture of American English as it has been use over time by a broad group of educated speakers.

This Dictionary is the product of four years of work by 175 contributors. In preparing the Dictionary, our editors have had access to a database containing hundreds of millions of lines of text that could be searched for any word in context.