For those of you who love words

The_Traveler · Nov 22, 2013

The OED has a special deal for a 12 month subscription- £95 or $154 for a year.

Oxford English Dictionary: The gift of over 1,000 years of English - Reference - Academic Promotions - Academic, Professional, & General - Oxford University Press

SnappingShark · Nov 22, 2013

I'll stick with my 1987 edition where the words 'Twerking' and 'Selfie' aren't included.

I expect in the later versions, 'Future' and 'Optimism' have been removed.

sm4him · Nov 22, 2013

The OED is a marvelous thing! Hopefully, I'll have a little money left over after car shopping and the deal will still be going. Any idea how long that deal lasts, Lew?
As one who does editing as part of my profession--as well as one who just enjoys looking up new words in the dictionary now and then--an online edition of the OED would be wonderful. Although it would also prove to be a great way to suck up large portions of time that I should be doing something else, too.

As far as the new words that get added--well, that's why it's the OED after all. Many, many of our words began in the same way as "twerking" or "selfie." Many MORE words once meant something entirely different than they mean today. This is what separates the English language from, say, Latin--it is a LIVING language. It evolves and changes over time. I find that fascinating and LOVE to see how some of these new words catch on and begin to develop a "life of their own," so to speak.

limr · Nov 22, 2013

That is a great deal. It's tempting, even though I already have a set of the books. Funny story - I worked with a woman for a short while at the Writing Center at my school. When it was slow, we'd chat about random stuff. One day she said to me, "Hey, you said you like old books, right?" Turns out she was trying to clean out, I don't know, a parent's house? Uncle's house? Something like that. She said she had some dictionaries that she thought I'd be interested in. She said if I wanted them, please take them off her hands so she could get more stuff out of the house.

A few days later, she handed over two big heavy boxes. I put them in my car. A couple of days after that, I thought, "I wonder what she gave me" and I opened the box. A complete set of the 1933 OED.

Now I'm just waiting for someone to not know what a Hasselblad is so he or she will just hand it over

limr · Nov 22, 2013

sm4him said:
The OED is a marvelous thing! Hopefully, I'll have a little money left over after car shopping and the deal will still be going. Any idea how long that deal lasts, Lew?
As one who does editing as part of my profession--as well as one who just enjoys looking up new words in the dictionary now and then--an online edition of the OED would be wonderful. Although it would also prove to be a great way to suck up large portions of time that I should be doing something else, too.

As far as the new words that get added--well, that's why it's the OED after all. Many, many of our words began in the same way as "twerking" or "selfie." Many MORE words once meant something entirely different than they mean today. This is what separates the English language from, say, Latin--it is a LIVING language. It evolves and changes over time. I find that fascinating and LOVE to see how some of these new words catch on and begin to develop a "life of their own," so to speak.

Well, and the OED's mission was always to describe language as it was actually used; it wanted to describe, not prescribe, language use.