Oxford English Dictionary the dic. of dic’s?
- Yes, there is no dic. like it
- I’ve seen better (please do tell)
oed.com/
Is this Dictionary as cool as a friend recently made it out to be? I was flipping throug a small etymology book at Cave’s and it was getting me all excited. I went to my friend telling him about my excitement of looking of all these words, the history and what language they came from and he said:
“Stop you have to see the Oxford English Dictionary.”
And went on to tell me about how cool it is.
Well, they have a CDed version of it now. I pose the original question:
Is this Dictionary as cool as a friend recently made it out to be?
My gut says yes.
Yes, Miltown, the OED is the greatest dictionary in the world and it is totally cool. In fact, it is so cool that when I taught Freshman English in a University in California and I wanted to introduce my students to it I did so by handing out to the students a whole page from the dictionary on the word “fuck.” A whole page! A whole page of etymology and historical uses of the word fuck in literature. How cool. The students loved it.
While it is great taht the OED is available online, it looks to me like the service costs US $550. On the other hand, years ago I joined the Book of the Month Club because the free gift for signing up was the condensed version of the OED. If you ever get to a real library in the near future, Miltown, look for the OED and you’ll be blown away – it’s something like 12 or 15 volumes. It takes up a whole shelf. So the condensed version is really something. It’s two very big volumes with pages made of tissue paper, with 4 pages printed on each side of a page, and the print is so small you need a magnifying glass. In fact, the condensed version comes in a box with a magnifying glass.
So to answer your question, Miltown, yes it is totally bitchin. I just wish I could fork out $550 for the online version.
You can get the whole thing on a CD now for $295 US, the CD contains all 20 volumes that the books have. I’m assuming this is the same thing.
oed.com/public/publications/cd_v3_faq.htm
I bought the Compact Edition from of book club years and years ago for GBP 50. It is a facsimilie of the full edition but has six pages per page. You need a magnifying glass to read it. But the etymology is fantastic.