The Chambers Dictionary was first published byWilliam andRobert Chambers asChambers's English Dictionary in 1872. It was an expanded version ofChambers's Etymological Dictionary of 1867, compiled by James Donald. A second edition came out in 1898, and was followed in 1901 by a new compact edition calledChambers's Twentieth Century Dictionary.[1]
The dictionary is widely used by Britishcrossword solvers and setters, and byScrabble players (though it is no longer the officialScrabble dictionary). It contains many moredialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions. Examples of such definitions include those foréclair ("a cake, long in shape but short in duration") andmiddle-aged ("between youth and old age, variously reckoned to suit the reckoner").[2] These jocular definitions were removed by the publisher in the 1970s, but many of them were reinstated in 1983 because of the affection in which they were held by readers.
The twelfth edition ofThe Chambers Dictionary was published in August 2011 byChambers Harrap Publishers Ltd and runs to 1936 pages with 62,500 main entries.[3] This edition is available for mobile use as an iPhone, iPad, or Android app. That has been followed by the thirteenth edition published in 2014. Also on sale is the smaller21st Century Dictionary of 1664 pages, where "the focus is on the English that people use today, and definitions are given in straightforward, accessible language". This dictionary can be accessed for freeonline.
In an agreement withMattel's predecessor,J. W. Spear & Sons, theChambers Dictionary was, for several decades, the official source of words for the bookOfficial Scrabble Words (OSW), a lexicon of all words and inflections playable in tournamentScrabble within the UK and other countries such as New Zealand and Australia. In 2005, Mattel changed the source dictionary toCollins English Dictionary.
If you pause to readChambers while solving a puzzle, you may also find some quirky definitions in the best Johnsonian tradition: try ECLAIR and MIDDLE AGE for example.