Webster’s Essential Mini Dictionary
With short definitions that are easy to understand, this monolingual dictionary is suitable for beginners and pre-intermediate students.
Favorite Entries
Webster's Essential Mini Dictionary has all the words and phrases that you need to learn in American English. Select "Essential American English" from the list of dictionaries at the top of any page on Cambridge Dictionaries Online to search this dictionary.
Key Features
Understand the meaning
Simple definitions use the words that you know: The definition at accelerate is written to explain the word if you do not already know it.
See which words to learn first
Clear symbols tell you the level of the most important words in English: At about, the first sense is marked A1, which tells you that this is a very important sense. The phrase what/how about…? has two senses marked A2 and B1 that are important for more advanced users.
Learn how to use the word
Thousands of short, natural example sentences show words in context: At able, the example shows how to use be able to, because these are words that are often used together.
American Pronunciation
Hear the words spoken online with thousands of American English recordings: Try listening to the different pronunciations for the verb advise and the noun advice.
Also available as a book
Get Webster’s Essential Mini Dictionary from Cambridge ESL.
- Special notes that tell you the most common mistakes in English – and how to avoid them.
- 600 pictures
- 16-page Guide to the Dictionary with exercises for use in class or at home.
- 16 color pages help with learning vocabulary for topics such as Clothes and Sports.
- Essential Phrasal Verbs section gives extra help with phrasal verbs.
Other dictionaries
- The Cambridge Essential English Dictionary is a British English Dictionary with similar features.
- The Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary is suitable for intermediate learners of American English.
- For the Cambridge Dictionaries Online SMART Thesaurus feature, try the Cambridge Advanced Learner's Dictionary.
In other dictionaries...
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’.
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Word of the Day
apocryphal
describes a story that is probably not true although often told and believed by some people to have...
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