words words words
February 24, 2018 4:00 AM   Subscribe

 
"James Murray and his staff compiling the first edition of the New English Dictionary, published in 1928. Photograph: Alamy" is the most wonderful thing ever.
posted by unliteral at 4:41 AM on February 24, 2018


No mention of William Chester Minor!
posted by unliteral at 4:48 AM on February 24, 2018 [4 favorites]


Spending 12 months tracing the history of a two-letter word seems dangerously close to folly.

does not
posted by thelonius at 5:48 AM on February 24, 2018 [26 favorites]


If that be folly, I never wish to be disenfollious!
posted by GenjiandProust at 6:22 AM on February 24, 2018 [17 favorites]


The long read

I SEE WHAT YOU DID THERE
posted by ZenMasterThis at 7:11 AM on February 24, 2018


I am the word-lover they are hating for. :(
posted by corb at 7:55 AM on February 24, 2018


In the 70s, you could get a free compact unabridged version of the OED by joining a certain book-of-the-month club. Cost to join: $50.

Every young writer of the time salivated over this offer, and many of us broke down and joined the silly club just to get the dictionary.

The two-volume, foot-tall dictionary came in a slip case with a little drawer at the top, which held a magnifying glass, meant to be used to see the minuscule print.

I've barely used my compact OED over the ensuing 40 years (too difficult to pull from the slipcase). But I use the magnifying glass all the time to see little things around the house. The glass is always there, conveniently accessible in the drawer of the OED.
posted by Modest House at 8:04 AM on February 24, 2018 [30 favorites]


My sentence of the day:
Some have dared to dream even bigger than polysemous aubergines.
posted by doctornemo at 8:47 AM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


I also joined the book-of-the-month club just for that compact OED. I still have and use the magnifying glass, but the bulky print dictionary perished in an unfortunately necessary book conflagration just before I left the Midwest and moved to the Arizona-Sonora borderlands.
posted by Agave at 8:55 AM on February 24, 2018


But is the second volume of your compact OED upside down?
posted by not_the_water at 9:21 AM on February 24, 2018


> In the 70s, you could get a free compact unabridged version of the OED by joining a certain book-of-the-month club. Cost to join: $50.

Ha — I got it for half that price without having to join the club! I was working at a used-book store, a guy came in wanting to sell his copy, and (being the only employee around at the moment) I cut a private deal and bought it myself for $25. I still have it. There was no magnifying glass, but I'm nearsighted enough I don't need the help.
posted by languagehat at 9:23 AM on February 24, 2018 [9 favorites]


My dad had (probably still has) that compact OED! Though the dictionary I truly loved was his gigantic Webster's Second International, which sat on a stand of its own in his office. Not only useful for looking up wonderful archaic words, but many a fall leaf and spring flower was pressed between its pages.
posted by tavella at 10:22 AM on February 24, 2018


I'll take this opportunity to ask those who have one: what is the magnification power of that hand lens? My compact OED came to me without one, and I would like to obtain something roughly similar.
posted by sandettie light vessel automatic at 12:23 PM on February 24, 2018


I'm still pissed at Steve Jobs for changing the Mac processor twice, so my $300 electronic OED2 is worthless. (You can run programs from the previous processor, but the program is now two processors back.)

A paper one would be better than nothing, but the OED is way way better with an entire-text search function. Essential if you want to look up, say, every word borrowed from Sanskrit.
posted by zompist at 1:51 PM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


what is the magnification power of that hand lens?

I regret to say that the power is nowhere indicated on the magnifying glass.
posted by Modest House at 3:31 PM on February 24, 2018


Modest House, my father must have done just that, as I fondly recall using that lens on all sorts of silly things. I will have to check on what happened to it, but I hope my mother still has it. I did in fact use the dictionary (with the magnifier, though my eyes were young enough to make do without) and my father used it semi-regularly.
posted by rum-soaked space hobo at 3:34 PM on February 24, 2018 [1 favorite]


Back in the 1980s I exchanged paper correspondence with Stan Kelly-Bootle, author of The Devil's DP Dictionary, which seems to have never been fully digitized (I was also unaware of the long-awaited follow-up under the title "The Computer Contradictionary" which was published almost 15 years later - I wonder if he used any of the suggestions I sent him, but I don't remember what they were.

Sadly, devilsdpdictionary.com and contradictionary.com are registered and unused (as is devilsdictionary.com, although Ambrose Bierce's original is out-of-copyright and online). I have had a longtime interest in less-than-serious dictionaries, but I'm not that thrilled with the WikiWackyness of UrbanDictionary (especially disappointed that they registered suburbandictionary.com... whatsamatter, can't you handle a little competition?).
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:57 PM on February 24, 2018


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