Product Description

New title! A concise guide to the essential language of medicine. More than 35,000 entries. Pronunciations provided for all entries. Covers brand names and generic equivalents of common drugs.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #94012 in Books
• Published on: 2006-08-04
• Original language: English
• Binding: Mass Market Paperback
• 833 pages

Ingram
Merriam-Webster's Medical Dictionary packs more than 35,000 entries filled with information into an easy-to-use paperback home and office guide to medical terminology. This up-to-date reference provides definitions for long-established terms and new words, including medical prefixes, suffixes, and abbreviations. Brand names and generic equivalents of many commonly used medications are also included.

About the Author

The Merriam brothers desired a continuity of editorship that would link Noah Webster's efforts with their own editions, so they selected Chauncey A. Goodrich, Webster's son-in-law and literary heir, who had been trained in lexicography by Webster himself, to be their editor in chief. Webster's son William also served as an editor of that first Merriam-Webster dictionary, which was published on September 24, 1847.

Although Webster's work was honored, his big dictionaries had never sold well. The 1828 edition was priced at a whopping $20; in 13 years its 2,500 copies had not sold out. Similarly, the 1841 edition, only slightly more affordable at $15, moved slowly. Assuming that a lower price would increase sales, the Merriams introduced the 1847 edition at $6, and although Webster's heirs initially questioned this move, extraordinary sales that brought them $250,000 in royalties over the ensuing 25 years convinced them that the Merriams' decision had been abundantly sound.

The first Merriam-Webster dictionary was greeted with wide acclaim. President James K. Polk, General Zachary Taylor (hero of the Mexican War and later president himself), 31 U.S. senators, and other prominent people hailed it unreservedly. In 1850 its acceptance as a resource for students began when Massachusetts ordered a copy for every school and New York placed a similar order for 10,000 copies to be used in schools throughout the state. Eventually school use would spread throughout the country. In becoming America's most trusted authority on the English language, Merriam-Webster dictionaries had taken on a role of public responsibility demanded of few other publishing companies. 

Customer Reviews

It is a NO Star...
People...Please do not waste your money on this garbage. It is out of date, inaccurate and either too simplistic or too hard to understand (I am a physician's assistant). I'm not sure why Webster is letting the DREADED DELMAR get hold of their titles to ruin them like they are doing. This is the second piece of crap they've made out of something nice.

Compact paperback manages to be comprehensive
As a medical transcriptionist with limited office space in my home, even shelf space for my reference material is limited. I could have gotten a larger, more complete medical dictionary, and frankly there have been times that would have come in handy. But due to space considerations, this almost pocket-sized (yet very thick) volume has been a very pleasant surprise. While some features of larger dictionaries are missing, such as cross-referencing and extensive lists under "syndrome," "disease," etc., in my line of work I usually only need the spelling of such terms rather than definition, and I have specialty books from Stedman's to provide that; for a quick reference to find definitions of the 35,000 terms in this book, I'm thrilled to have an inexpensive, compact reference like this.

software need to be updated for new windows OS
I used it for half year on the windows98 without problems. But I recently found it is very unstable on windows NT 4.0. On windows 2000, it simply hang over there without any response.
The software otherwise is good.