Cassell's Concise Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary

For fast, easy reference and comprehensive listings, Cassell's Concise Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary is unbeatable. It contains in concise form the words most frequently used in scholarly and academic usage.

Cassell's Concise Latin-English, English-Latin Dictionary is easy to read and full of complete usage information that's simple to access. This invaluable volume, backed by the world's foremost language authority, is the most effective concise dictionary available to the Latin language.

I especially like the way they deal with variant forms of words, especially participles. They often list the participial forms of verbs separately (but under the same root verb heading, prefixed by the word "Hence"). Latin participles, of course, are very easily determined from the verbs, so it's not absolutely necessary; but the way they did it is tremendously helpful in two ways:

1. Sometimes the participle has a slightly different meaning or emphasis from the original verb. This allows them to separately distinguish the senses of the participle from the senses of the basic verb;

2. It is a tremendous boon to memorizing vocabulary. Very often, an English word has been taken almost letter-for-letter from the participle, while the original verb has not come across into English. (Example: the verb "ago" doesn't come across in English, but the participial form "agens/agent" does.) Relating the verb to the English is a great help in memorizing vocabulary.

My only real problem with this dictionary has to do with the size and printing. At this size, it is very difficult to distinguish the marks they use for long vs. short vowels. It would have been better to never mark short vowels, so you know that if it doesn't have a long vowel mark it's short. Sometimes you're left puzzling over whether a given vowel is long or short, not a good feature to have in a dictionary.

Other than this, it's an excellent book, and an excellent value.


Still useful after all these years.   March 18, 2002
Julius Caesar (Bloomington, IN United States)
24 out of 24 found this review helpful

As a graduate student in Latin, I have nothing but praise for Cassell's dictionary. The entries are concise and helpful, and it has sections for both English to Latin and Latin to English, which makes it ideal for introductory-level courses that require student composition.

As for the reviewer who complained that it does not contain "longa" or "lata," the individual is quite mistaken and displaying his ignorance; Latin adjectives are listed under the masculines, thus "longus-a-um" is present, as is "latus-a-um."

An inexpensive and effective tool that's valuable as a quick aid for nearly all levels of Latin.