It was an expanded version of Chambers's Etymological Dictionary of 1867, compiled by James Donald.
It contains many more dialectal, archaic, unconventional and eccentric words than its rivals, and is noted for its occasional wryly humorous definitions.
[2] These jocular definitions were removed by the publisher in the 1970s, but many of them were reinstated in 1983 because of the affection in which they were held by readers.
Also on sale is the smaller 21st Century Dictionary of 1664 pages, where "the focus is on the English that people use today, and definitions are given in straightforward, accessible language".
In an agreement with Mattel's predecessor, J. W. Spear & Sons, the Chambers Dictionary was, for several decades, the official source of words for the book Official Scrabble Words (OSW), a lexicon of all words and inflections playable in tournament Scrabble within the UK and other countries such as New Zealand and Australia.