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Get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade in The Oxford English Dictionary : second edition (20 Volumes Set) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £60.00, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
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The OED has been to me a teacher, a companion, a source of endless discovery. I could not have become a writer without it.-- Anthony Burgess
The greatest treasure of wordsall the raw material a writer needs for a lifetime of work.-- Annie Proulx
The Oxford English Dictionary is more than a national monument to lexicography. The vast storehouse of the words and phrases that constitute the vocabulary of the English-speaking people is the ultimate authority on the English language as well as a history of English speech and thought from its infancy to the present day.-- The Times
The gigantic total picture of the English languagean epic achievement.-- The Observer
The greatest dictionary ever compiled.-- Sunday Telegraph
The greatest dictionary in any language.-- The Telegraph
It is a remarkable work of scholarship, and must rank high among the wonders of the world of learning.-- The Times Educational Supplement
The greatest work in dictionary making ever undertaken.-- The New York Times
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(I tried to put these comments in "packaging feedback" but because Amazon.co.uk delegated the order to Amazon EU they won't accept feedback!)
I f you love words, their meanings and origins, (and you've got a few quid or dollars to spare — and have got the shelf space), you've just got to get yourself a hardcopy set of the OED.
With the world of words rapidly going on-line, this definitive 20-volume lexicon of the English language will in a generation or so almost certainly become a collector's item if not a museum piece.
The OED is an incredible record of 19th and 20th Century Anglophone civilization, and deserves to become a treasured heirloom by our grandchildren and further generations in this new Millennium.
Dictionaries are much more than spellcheckers and crossword puzzle solvers. A dictionary like the OED has its real power and value in its use as an etymological tool. It’s the origin of words and where they were first used that gives us a fundamental understanding of our language.
For lovers of Shakespeare there are references to words first appearing in his works on almost every page of the OED. A great on-line project would be to hyperlink a "Complete Works" of the Bard to the OED with all the non-common words he uses.
One word of warning to book lovers and potential owners of the OED ---- Make sure your four feet of shelf space is well shielded from direct sunlight. Those gorgeous royal blue fly-covers will fade very quickly if over exposed to UV.
If you were given the choice of what books you could take to that hypothetical desert island, the OED would have to be the linguaphiles choice. It is the perfect encapsulation and guide to what our language and culture is all about.
As a footnote you have to admire that quirky but subtle British humour that shines through even in the serious world of dictionary publishing. Check out the spines of Volumes VII and XVII where they are indexed with the first and last word in each volume.
In Volume VII we have " Hat -- Intervacuum ". Is the OED subtly telling us what lurks under a Stetson? Volume XVI is indexed from " Soot -- Styx'. Is this evidence that there is a hot and smoky welcome on the other side of that river between here and hell?
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