Chambers Murray Latin-English Dictionary

Rating:
Summary: Caveat emptor!
Review: Do not buy a copy of this dictionary sight unseen. I bought a copy and it was missing thirty-three pages! Pages 760-793 were missing, in their place pages 729-760 were duplicated! Obviously, given the otherwise positive reviews here, other people have not encountered this printing error, but it is unlikely that only one copy would have turned out this way.

Rating:
Summary: A Very Useful Dictionary
Review: I ordered this dictionary after reading the reviews. I agree with the reviewer from Little Rock; the dictionary is very useful and contains a wealth of information on Latin words. It has been a great help for me in translating poets like Martial and Statius. I have difficulty understanding why the reviewer from Israel did not know this was a Latin to English only dictionary; the title clearly explains the purpose of this book. Also, the entries are a standard dictionary size font; they are not unusually small. Unless you want to buy a copy of the Oxford Latin Dictionary... then this dictionary will suit the needs of translating from Latin into English.

Rating:
Summary: A worthy substitute for Lewis and Short
Review: I own a number of Latin dictionaries including the Oxford Latin Dictionary (which a serious Latin scholar should always have access to), Lewis and Short, a hefty tome in itself, Cassell's, Langensheidt's pocket, and this one. I was first introduced to it as an undergraduate Classics major by a professor who recommended it for a course, but under the title of Smith's Smaller Latin Dictionary when it was available in hardback. I have had a copy of Chambers-Murray in my classroom for the last 5 years and find it a valuable tool when we are reading a passage because of the large number of references to authors. For instance, today in class we were reading from Juvenal's 10th Satire and the word praetoria came up in the passage about Hannibal. When we looked it up, there was a reference to what it meant in Juvenal, but when we looked in Cassell's there was no similar reference. As to a previous reviewer's complaint about missing pages, such things happen, and I imagine even a good press run can produce some lemons. This binding has stood up well so far.