The Macquarie Encyclopedic Dictionary

Special Signature Edition Commemorating the 30th Anniversary of our Nation's Dictionary

• I welcome the publication of this Dictionary of Australian English, not just as a work of reference on the way in which Australians use the English language, but as evidence of the Australian contribution to the conversation of humanity… Professor Manning Clark AC The Macquarie Dictionary, the first comprehensive dictionary of Australian English, is one of the essential parts of Australian nationhood… We were a long time getting a dictionary like this. We should be proud of its service to the people of Australia… Donald Horne AO …in the case of The Macquarie: What we find when we go to consult it is another and more orderly version of the world we are in, confirmation, of the intimate sort, of where we have come from, and where and who we are…David Malouf I remember the joy and outright enthusiasm with which the Macquarie Dictionary was greeted when it first appeared in 1981. Here was a dictionary of English as it was used on this great, eccentric continent, a continent located at a huge distance from the Northern European sources…Tom Keneally AO …how we value tradition; how we preserve and trash language; how we claim certainties and cede to doubts; how we wear the colours of our language and where we place the particular adornments that are purely our own, purely Australian -- this is what a volume such as this will show us. Jana Wendt
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