From the publisher
The words explained in this dictionary account for over 90% of the language that is written and spoken. That is because there is a relatively small number of words which are used over and over again, while there is a larger number of words which are not used very frequently. For example, in this introduction, there are 743 words in total. Of these, the word `the' occurs 61 times, while 169 words occur only once. In fact, there are only 275 different words in the whole of the introduction. In a much larger amount of text, the words that do not occur very frequently are much less important. That is why this dictionary concentrates on the words that occur over and over again, and why the entries represent the language that students really do need to know and to use.
The entries provide a detailed account of the main uses and meanings of each word. Each of the forms is listed at the start of each entry, along with information about variant spellings where they exist. Explanations are written in full sentences, and reflect typical grammatical behaviour as well as providing a clear description of meaning. And of course, the thousands of examples are taken directly from The Bank of English, showing typical patterns of use and grammatical structure.
There are a number of usage notes throughout the text which supplement the information already provided in the dictionary entries, and which, in many cases, draws together information that helps to clarify the distinctions that exist between some items.
