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

Cassell's Latin Dictionary is an extremely useful tool. It really helps when you're looking up a Latin word for an English translation or vice versa. The only set-back is that it isn't very clear as to where each definition would be used.

This is a decent dictionary, but not for absolute beginers. It has no grammar and some missing words that are pretty common, still they should be there. Overall it's a good dictionary, considering that it has also an english-latin part.

I already owned an Elementary Latin Dictionary when I bought this, and I bought it because I was about to take a course in Latin Prose Composition, so I figured the English-Latin section would be useful. I then discovered that their English-Latin is a fraction of the size of the Latin-English, and for being so small, it's very impractical. I would often have to think up several synonyms for the word I was looking for before I could find a usable entry, and was surprised to find many obscure English words (salubriousness, ophthalmia, higgledy-piggledy--not kidding) that most English-speakers would never think to look up.

As for the Latin-English portion, it seems to be a pretty good reference, with reasonably detailed explanations of each entry. My issue was that my Prose Comp. teacher was requiring us to use macrons in our compositions, and I found that this dictionary was a little ... shall I say higgledy-piggledy about their inclusion. Also, macrons are completely absent from the English-Latin side.

For English-Latin, I found that the genral vocabulary in the back of my textbook for the semester (Conversational Latin for Oral Proficiency), while shorter yet than Cassell's, was much more practical. For Latin-English, I still prefer my ELD.

For anyone who would like to further their Latin language knowledge, i would advise this book greatly. This book helped me get through 3years of Latin in high school, so i decided to get one of my own.

This edition replaced my Cassell's paperback editon & I'm very pleased with my selection. It's an excellent resource and very user friendly.