Stats for nerds
2recommend
4mentions
4people
2011–2019years
50% recommend50% neutral
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- One of my favourite possessions is The Compact Edition Of The Oxford English Dictionary, which is the complete text of the multi-volume OED shrunk down into two volumes totalling about 4000 pages (it comes in a case with a drawer for a magnifying glass). I got it for next to nothing on eBay a few years ago. I don’t use it every day but it’s wonderful for browsing and inspiration in the way this article describes.
https://global.oup.com/academic/product/the-compact-oxford-e...
This is the single-volume second edition. Mine is the two-volume first edition.
- And you'd still be using the wrong one if you use Webster's. The correct (inasmuch as anything can be correct in this world - correct for me!) choice is the compact edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, which is quite possibly the most glorious duology of volumes of infinitesimally minuscule type ever published, from Aa to Zyxst. Many happy childhood evenings of eyestrain and ebullient exclamations of sesquipedalian rhapsody.
It even comes with a magnifying glass.
- Of the twin vices of heft and tiny print The Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary has both. I've had my used (two volume) flea market copy of The Compact for over twenty years. The magnifying glass and slipcase were absent when I purchased but back then I could read the tiny text. These days, I default to +2.0 reading glasses and a 100w equivalent lamp though I could probably get by with less...I think.
It would be great to have as an ebook, but such a thing does not exist and if it did, I suspect the price would close to two magnitudes more than the $8 I negotiated for my copy...heft perhaps had the virtue that the seller was less inclined to lug those many pounds back to their car.
Ebooks don't necessarily provide perpetual access: http://www.slate.com/articles/technology/technology/2009/07/... and https://www.theguardian.com/money/2012/oct/22/amazon-wipes-c...
- If you've ever thumbed through the Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, you'll know these are all very valid questions. :)
Related
The compact Oxford English dictionary
1 recommend · 3
The Cambridge grammar of the English language
3 recommend · 21
The Oxford English dictionary
1 recommend · 2
A dictionary of the English language
1 recommend · 7
Politics and the English language
112 recommend · 263
Cambridge advanced learner's dictionary
0 recommend · 2
