Most people look up dictionaries to understand the meaning of words, but some people use dictionaries as interesting and recreational reading. According to many authors, Mr. Qian Zhongshu is such a reader. He read the heavy dictionary one by one, letter by letter; on the long journey, he held an English dictionary that others thought was "bland" and read it contentedly for a month; he was on the ship to England. The above is accompanied by Dr. Johnson's "English Dictionary", and I deeply enjoy the pleasure of it. I claim that the depth of interest is not enough for outsiders. I think if we have this spirit to delve into an English dictionary, we will make great progress in many aspects.
Lin Yutang once fell in love with "The Concise Oxford Dictionary" and "The Pocket Oxford Dictionary", calling them "the secret in the pillow". He believes that the selection of words in these two dictionaries is based on the needs of readers, and at the same time, they treat words as living materials and give examples, which are very useful. In fact, with the development of lexicography, good English dictionaries have emerged in endlessly over the past few decades, especially learner's dictionaries for readers whose native language is not English. For example, "Oxford Advanced Modern English Dictionary", "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English", "Chambers Popular English Dictionary", "Collins Selected English Dictionary", etc.---the definitions are explained in simple terms (the vocabulary used in the definition of "Longman" is about 2,000), the examples are precise and in-depth, the grammar is concise and to the point, and the analysis is interesting. For English learners, its practicality goes beyond Lin Yutang’s Pillow Secret. You might as well take one or two of them as reading materials and read them until you can't bear to put them down. , even inseparable for a moment, then the language will be learned. Among them, "Collins" is the most recent, and "Oxford" and "Longman" have dual interpretations.