In keeping with COBUILD’s long-established user-friendly tradition, this new edition will help you to understand not only the meanings of words, but also how to use them properly in context. The inclusion of a wealth of new words and meanings taken from areas such as social media, technology, and popular culture means that the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary continues to reflect today’s English. The thousands of example sentences taken from the Collins Corpus ensure that language is shown in a meaningful context.

New to this edition is the addition of levels pertaining to the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR). This framework has been developed to describe language proficiency, using a range of levels from A1 to C2. The Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary has assigned a level to each meaning and phrase in the dictionary; the levels Ai to B2 are shown explicitly in the text, with all remaining vocabulary falling into the levels C1 or C2. This allows learners to see immediately which words and meanings are the most relevant to their own language learning journey.

The inclusion of hundreds of interesting and informative language features will help you to acquire an even better understanding of how real English works. These features include detailed information about collocation, word history, and usage.

As well as checking and explaining the meanings of thousands of existing words, COBUILD’s lexicographers have continued to ensure that our 4.5-billion-word database - the Collins Corpus - is kept up to date. The corpus contains English language material from thousands of different written and spoken sources.

We hope you will find this new edition of the Collins COBUILD Advanced Learner’s Dictionary a valuable resource that complements and enhances all areas of language study.