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The Macquarie Dictionary is a dictionary of Australian English, it also pays considerable attention to New Zealand English. Originally it was a publishing project of Jacaranda Press, a Brisbane educational publisher, for which an editorial committee was formed, largely from the Linguistics department of Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. It is published by Macquarie Library Pty Ltd, a company specifically established for the task. It is notable for its extensive inclusion of encyclopædic content: a great many proper names, particularly of Australian people and places, are included.
Since its first publication, in 1981, it has been progressively adopted by Australian schools, businesses and courts as their standard dictionary.
The second edition was published in 1991 and it introduced encyclopædic content to many entries. The third edition, published in 1997, made use of computer technology to add a large number of examples of Australian usage, reminiscent of the original Oxford English Dictionary. The fourth edition, published in 2005, increases the number of citations and offers etymologies for phrases.
The dictionary gives standard spellings in Australian English which reflect the debt that Australian English owes to British English with spellings like colour, centre, defence for the main entries. It also gives -ise spellings first and lists -ize spellings as acceptable variants, unlike the Oxford English Dictionary and some other dictionaries of British English that prefer -ize to -ise as is the norm in British English. The preference for -ise reflects the ACE samples and studies of usage.
It has at times been criticised for its omissions especially in the coverage of recent formations, a criticism that most new editions of dictionaries encounter because of the focus on new words. It has also been criticised for its pronunciations. While all the pronunciations in the Macquarie were written from scratch, over the various editions the drift towards accepting some variants from American English is evident (ceremony pronounced /se.rə.moʊ.ni/ for example). Some sections of the community find this disturbing but language in Australia is changing with technology and its influence (mobile phones and television).
A number of smaller versions are available, such as the pocket edition pictured here, as well as companion volumes such as a thesaurus.