Oxford English Dictionary

My Oxford English Dictionary

When the second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1989, one critic described the occasion as "like being present at the release of the second edition of the bible". I said at the time that I would have a copy one day, and now I have. It is usually prohibitively expensive, so my purchase was courtesy of the recent special offer.

It is 20 volumes, the mother of all dictionaries. People don't understand the name of the 2-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, because they cannot imagine anything larger. Well here it is:

It is so big because it defines not only by prescription ("this means such-and-such"), but also by example. It gives heaps of quotations that illustrate how the word has been used over the years. It even gives the source of the quotations. The entry for the word "set" is over 18 pages long! It's wonderful for bookworms.

Oxford University Press has a website devoted to the OED, as it is often called.

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