On an academic fora last semester I was asked which Latin dictionary was my favourite. At the time I favoured the Collins' Latin Dictionary. Although this is a superb lexicon, and I still refer to it frequently (particularly for Latin phrases), I have discovered through reading academic literature (Jstor articles and so forth) that the only real true best of the best Latin lexicon is without a shadow of a doubt the Lewis and Short (I am not referring to Perseus' website, which although a superb website, does not factor in phrasing and has no information on entries which refer to other entries nor has no contextualisation from phrasing). The Lewis and Short (Freund) I own is several thousand pages long, and is simply sublime. However, because it is so vast in volume, I open it only when I must (as I don't own a lectern and it is too big to fit on a music stand), so I have come to love another two lexicons: the Cassell's compact (from Oxford University) and also the Chambers-Murray. These two stand in high esteem, and best even the "Pocket" Oxford (which is impossible to fit into one's pocket, paradoxically).
I'm off to translate some more Ovid.
vale.
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