Merriam-Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary by Merriam-Webster

From the Publisher

Merriam-Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary, Revised Edition is an invaluable resource for health care professionals with over 59,000 entries covering today's most widely used health-care terms, abbreviations, medication names, and biographies of medical pioneers. Unlike unwieldy medical encyclopedias, MW Medical Desk Dictionary, 2E is compact, portable, and affordable making it perfect for everyone from allied health students to medical professionals to consumers without a medical background who want a desktop reference without investing a lot of money.

Library Journal

The rapidly changing nature of medical research justifies regular revisions of medical dictionaries and several excellent volumes have been published in the last few years. Of the recent releases, this dictionary may have the most comprehensive range of terminology. Besides the usual definitions of diseases and medical tests, this edition includes terms from genetics (junk DNA, retrotransposon) and sports medicine (Tommy John surgery) as well as popular terminology (sick headache, morning breath) and dietary supplements (SAMe). Definitions are current (SARS) but quite brief. One of Merriam Webster's strengths is the inclusion of eponyms; however, this dictionary does not provide illustrations and has minimal supplemental information. The previous edition of Merriam Webster's medical dictionary is available electronically at no cost through medlineplus and is scheduled for update later this year. Many of these definitions remain the same, and their brevity makes the online version a useful alternative. Taber's Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary, though expensive, has more thorough definitions and includes extensive color illustrations as well as lengthy appendixes. Tabor's also includes eponyms but in less detail than Merriam Webster. Like Merriam Webster, the 2004 edition of American Heritage Stedman's Medical Dictionary has brief definitions but does include a few more supplemental features. Black's Medical Dictionary released its latest version in the United States in 2004, but that edition was actually published in Britain in 2002 making it less current than the other recent releases. Bottom Line When faced with these excellent choices, academic and health libraries will be more satisfied with the 2005 edition of Tabor's, but smaller public libraries may find Merriam Webster's reasonable cost and breadth of coverage useful.-Tina Neville, Univ. of South Florida Lib., St. Petersburg Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

BookList

At first glance, one may wonder why yet another medical dictionary is needed when there are such classics as Black's Medical Dictionary, Blakiston's Gould Medical Dictionary, and Stedman's Medical Dictionary. Merriam Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary, an update of the 1986 edition published as Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary, is written for laypeople. Its format and size remain unchanged. According to the publisher, there are more than 5,000 new words, and 6,000 definitions have been revised. Definitions for such terms as "AIDS" have been extensively revised to reflect the Center for Disease Control's new criteria. As in the previous one, some 1,000 biographies of individuals whose names are an integral part of the medical literature are included The publisher claims that this volume "combines a medical wordlist (including British terms and spelling variants) selected and defined on the basis of citational evidence." Since there are several million medically relevant citations, a critical review of those included in this dictionary was made. Also, every word used in the defining vocabulary had to be in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. The result is a usable and understandable dictionary that includes pronunciation, capitalization, division, usage, and variants. There are no illustrations. The definitions are concise and technical but still understandable by the educated layperson This dictionary will not replace the standard medical dictionaries in medical libraries but is the reasonably priced medical dictionary of choice for school and public libraries. It would be especially useful for secretaries and nonmedical users.

Booknews

A medical word list selected and defined on the basis of citational evidence, is enhanced by such features of a desk dictionary as pronunciation, end-of-line division points, functional labels, common derivatives, and irregular inflected forms. It includes terms used in, for example, sports pages, explaining what they refer to in medical terminology. A handbook of style is appended. The 1986 edition is here enlarged by about 1,000 words (to about 59,000) and updated throughout. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Booknews

New printing of a fine reference previously published (1986) as Webster's Medical Desk Dictionary. Annotation c. Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Details from Seller

• ISBN: 1401811884
• Publisher: Cengage Learning
• Pub. Date: April 2002
• Condition:

Comments from the Seller: Former Library book. Shows some signs of wear, and may have some markings on the inside. 100% Money Back Guarantee. Shipped to over one million happy customers. Your purchase benefits world literacy!

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents