With comprehensive coverage of key academic terms as well as a broad range of everyday meanings, this monolingual dictionary is perfect for intermediate and upper-intermediate students of American English.
Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary is the best dictionary for general American English on Cambridge Dictionaries Online. Select "American English" from the list of dictionaries at the top of any page on Cambridge Dictionaries Online to search this dictionary.
Words and meanings from U.S. and world history, English, algebra, geometry, art, biology, chemistry, earth science, physics, and other content areas are clearly labelled and explained. These can be main entries, such as hadron (from physics). Or they can be special meanings of more common words, such as the sense of line used in geometry.
Thousands of natural example sentences show words in context: At assign, the examples show that people can be assigned jobs, people can be assigned to a place, and things can be assigned to people.
Hear the words spoken online with thousands of American English recordings: Try listening to the different pronunciations for the "control" sense of lead and the "metal" sense of lead.
Get the Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary from Cambridge ESL.
If you search for a word, then decide you want to see what another Cambridge dictionary says about it, you can use the ‘In other dictionaries’ section on the right.
For example if you look up the definition for expenditure in British English, then want to find out what the American English dictionary says, click on ‘American English’. If you then want to find a Spanish translation for that word, click on ‘in Spanish’.
Read our blog about how the English language behaves.
Find words and meanings that have just started to be used in English, and let us know what you think of them.