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Preface
The Longman Dictionary of English Language and Culture is aimed at teachers and advanced students of English who need to understand not just difficult general words of English, such as dysfunctional or accede, but also the thousands of references to places, people, events, products, and institutions that they meet when they read newspapers or novels, or when they hear spoken language, for example, in films.
Not being able to understand these references has always made it difficult for students of English from other cultures to understand exactly what the author or speaker means. This Dictionary aims to enable those students to see more deeply into the culture of native speakers of English by giving not only a brief definition to explain what the person or thing is, but also by describing the connotations of the term. For example, if British people refer to the M25 you may be able to deduce from the context that this is a big important road in the UK, but the Dictionary tells you what it is famous for to British people – being very slow because of traffic jams.
As before, this new edition contains a full dictionary with 40,000 general language words, but also with 15,000 cultural references in addition, all of which have been fully updated. These range from literary figures to pop culture, from the Atkins Diet to the Gherkin, new technologies or products such as the iPod, important events such as 9/11, sporting heroes or celebrities such as David Beckham and Martha Stewart.
For this edition, the coverage of American cultural entries has been substantially increased, and you will find entries for more American celebrities and products, such as Oscar Mayer (a type of hot dog) and Roto-rooter (a drain clearing company).
Happy users of the First and Second Editions of this book have written to us to express their satisfaction with a book that provides the kind of information rarely found in other reference titles. We hope that users of this Third Edition will find it just as useful, if not more so!
Della Summers
Director – Longman Dictionaries