Customer Reviews

A Guide to the Oxford English Dictionary

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If you bought a 20-volume dictionary, you'd expect you'd need a guidebook, wouldn't you? Well, this is it. This book contains clear explanations of all of the conventions used in the Oxford English Dictionary. There are plenty of examples to illustrate all the intricacies that go into documenting the language, and each example is carefully chosen to best show-off the dictionary and acquaint the casual reader/peruser thereof. The second half of the book is a an "A-Z Companion" to the OED, which is interesting reading in and of itself. It took me a while to find a copy of this out-of-print book at a reasonable price, but it was well worth the wait and it improves the cost performance of my dictionary exponentially. If you have the big OED, you need this small OED guide.

For anyone who as cracked the covers of the OED, decipering the entries can be a daunting prospect. This slim work helps a little in the process. Much of what is in the book is to be found within the OED itself, but without the task of ferreting it out. This is not a real history of the OED, although it does include some wonderful antecodes, so don't expect it to be a page-turner. The best place for this book is next to the OED on the library shelf.