The Oxford English Dictionary (20 Volume Set) (Vols 1-20) [Hardcover]

John Simpson (Editor), Edmund Weiner (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0198611862 | ISBN-13: 978-0198611868 | Publication Date: March 30, 1989 | Edition: 2

Eighty years ago, the "greatest work in dictionary-making ever undertaken" was completed. And with its enormous range, unparalleled historical depth, detailed etymologies, and inexhaustible supply of illustrative quotations, it has enriched the lives of writers, readers, and word-lovers of all stripes ever since. Begun in 1857, published in ten volumes in 1928, subsequently revised and expanded to 20 volumes in 1989, and now adopted to the electronic age, the OED has become the most venerated and most beloved English-language reference ever compiled.

The key feature of the OED, of course, is its unique historical focus. Accompanying each definition is a chronologically arranged group of quotations that illustrate the evolution of meaning from the word's first recorded usage and show the contexts in which it can be used. The quotations are drawn from a huge variety of sources--literary, scholarly, technical, popular-and represent authors as disparate as Geoffrey Chaucer and Erica Jong, William Shakespeare and Raymond Chandler, Charles Darwin and John Le Carre. In all, nearly 2.5 million quotations--illustrating over a half-million words--can be found in the OED. Other features distinguishing the entries in the dictionary are the most authoritative definitions, detailed information on pronunciation, variant spellings throughout each word's history, extensive treatment of etymology, and details of area of usage and of any regional characteristics (including geographical origins).

A dictionary like no other in the world, the OED has been described as "among the wonders of the world of scholarship." Reflecting upon the Dictionary's 80 years, that statement is today more apt than it ever has been.


Also available online at: www.oed.com

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

The Oxford English Dictionary has long been considered the ultimate reference work in English lexicography. Compiled by the legendary editor James Murray and a staff of brilliant philologists and lexicographers (not to mention one homicidal maniac), the OED began as a a supplement to existing dictionaries, so that, as one lexicographer put it, "every word should be made to tell its own story." Enthusiastic readers sent Murray definitions and examples on identical slips of paper in response to a letter of appeal in 1879. By the time the last volume was published in 1928, the dictionary had swelled from 4 to 10 volumes containing over 400,000 entries. In the years since, the staff of the OED has continued to keep pace with our ever-evolving language, and today the dictionary weighs in at a whopping 20 volumes. The great joy of this dictionary lies in its extensive cross-references and word etymologies, which can run a full page or more. These features not only make the OED the most comprehensive and authoritative dictionary of the English language, but a delight to browse.

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What writers like most about the Oxford English Dictionary

	"I’m tempted to say that I love the OED because it contains every word in Middlemarch and To the Lighthouse, minus the unnecessary ones. I suspect, however, that that’s probably a familiar joke in dictionary circles."--Michael Cunningham, author of The Hours
	"The Oxford English Dictionary lets me follow the roots of words into the loamy depths of language. It lets me feel the abiding, generative life in it, the mysteries of its persistence and renewal."--Marilynne Robinson, Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Home
	"The OED is one of my favorite ways of avoiding writing, which under other circumstances can be tortuous. But not with the OED. To begin, I look up a word. Then I get interested in its derivation, which suggests another word, another derivation, another word--Wow!"--Jeanne Marie Laskas, author of The Exact Same Moon

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Review

Listen: the OED is priceless. The only disadvantage it's got is that the entries are so interesting and chocked with subsidiary info that sometimes what was originally supposed to be a quick one-word dash to the dictionary becomes a two-hour perusal of cross-references and ramifications and etymologies and the sorts of illustrative sentences that make your saliva flow with sheer interest. -- David Foster Wallace, novelist

Rummaging through the OED is as addicting as any narcotic. I ordered it originally to sell in my bookshop because I thought it would make a substantial statement about the quality of my books. Within a couple of months, though, I decided I treasured it too much to sell and took it home to keep. -- Thomas Brennan, owner, The Book Review, Atlanta, GA.

"Being the most expansive and exhaustive not to mention the most fun of all English dictionaries, its the finest testament I know to everything I love (and, all right, occasionally hate) about words."--Michael Cunningham (celebrated author of The Hours)
"Word lovers, the gods are smiling upon you. It no longer takes a small mortgage, or at least a trip to the library, to plumb the Oxford English Dictionary--the big one, not the abridged training-wheels versions. For its 75th anniversary since the last volume of the First Edition was published, Oxford University Press has knocked down the prices big time."--Chicago Sun-Times
"With its exhaustive definitions and precise etymology, the Oxford English Dictionary is absolutely indispensable to our work here at Jeopardy!"--Gary Johnson, Jeopardy! Supervising Producer/Writer
"The richest people in the world are those who have the OED on their shelves. Here is the greatest treasure of words waiting to be assembled into fiery tracts and rants, literary novels, histories, sagas, comic poems, exposes, polemics, tall tales and learned treatises, kids' books, advert copy, reports on busted dams and declarations, all the expressions of a hundred different cultures. And the sturdy boxes in which the dictionary comes are each the perfect size for a manuscript. So there it is, all the raw material a writer needs for a lifetime of work."--Annie Proulx
"Since my Milton teacher sent me to the OED at the start of my college career, that vast and virtuous monument has been an almost daily companion. It's far the most important of my reference aids; and of all things for a dictionary, it's proved likewise a steady source of surprise and delight."--Reynolds Price
"When I first got the OED I read it through from A to Z. I wondered which word had the greatest coverage, and in Volume VIII (Q-Sh), I found it: 'set.' More than a hundred and twenty meanings were given for the verb 'set' used alone; another thirty or so when used in conjunction with various prepositions and adverbs (set aside, set about, set apart, etc.). I got the feeling that this little three-letter word might be the most useful and versatile in the entire English language."--Oliver Sacks
"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
"No similar work, not even the great Lexicon of the brothers Grimm, is comparable to [the OED] in magnitude, accuracy, or completeness. It is one of the monuments to the patient persistence of scholarship and one of the most sterling illustrations of that strange piety which only scholars can understand."--The Nation
"No one who reads or writes seriously can be without the OED."--The Washington Post
"In all probability, the greatest continuing work of scholarship that this century has produced."--Newsweek
"It is a remarkable work of scholarship, and must rank high among the wonders of the world of learning."--The Times Educational Supplement

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 22000 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 2 edition (March 30, 1989)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0198611862
• ISBN-13: 978-0198611868
• Product Dimensions: 32 x 21 x 18.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 130 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (63 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #596,007 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

126 of 129 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars THE Dictionary of English, August 30, 2000

By 

"nara-yan" (Canada) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Oxford English Dictionary (20 Volume Set) (Vols 1-20) (Hardcover)

"Colonials" like me grew up in the shadow of this Everest of scholarship and the Himalayan series founded on its contents. And now, if we choose to, we can actually own the set, in its 2nd Edition. This is a very desirable acquisition.

Perhaps you worry that it might be an unwise purchase. We live in the age of the CD ROM, so why buy the printed volumes? The language seems to operate like a wheel rolling down a muddy slope picking up all manner of accretions as it progresses downhill. Will a work like this, then, become irrelevant? I think not. The citation formula used will always be relevant for readers interested in historical usage. The entire work constitutes, in a way, a history of the English Language, as well as a social history of English speaking peoples from the 12th century through to the end of the 20th century. Some scholars say it is unduly biased in the direction of English Victorian values, with a creeping pre-disposition toward a prescriptive rather than a descriptive stance on definitions. The compilers seem to want to position it to be a final arbiter on "Correct Usage". Who cares? It is manna in the wilderness to anyone who loves the language, who likes to browse, and is not stimulated by the inanity of television. If Political Correctness is the filter through which all literature must pass for you, you'll probably not read very much of value, anyway.

No other dictionary is so richly enjoyable as a work to read on its own. One does not go to the OED just to find the meaning of a word, one is beguiled, on opening a volume, to read many pages about all kinds of words. You'll never walk into the British Museum or the Louvre just to look at a single piece of Art and leave having looked only at that one piece. Here is the great exhibition of the language, its gallery.

All speakers and students of the language are in Oxford's debt, and will forever be so. No dictionary comes close in comprehensiveness of coverage (its word count, i.e., the quantity of words defined, exceeds that covered in any other competing dictionary). This set, rightly, is the central jewel in OUP's crown of publications. If you're a writer, you can't afford not to purchase this set.

Legend has it that a new "improved" edition will be out some time between 2001 and 2003. I sense that the improvements will appeal particularly to the ultra-scholarly linguist/lexicographers among its readers. Improvements shall include the addition of citations that might, for instance, antedate the earliest citation shown in a previous edition. It might, however, not be utterly essential to you you to know, for example, that the first user of the term "Byronic" was Byron himself. The changes from the 2nd to the 3rd edition may be minimal, in print at least. Doubtless, there will be significant improvements to the search capability, appearance, and user friendliness of the software version. But, don't hesitate to purchase the printed 2nd edition. If you feel the CD ROM version is superior to the printed edition, this will boil down to whether or not you are a bibliophile. Nothing equals the tactile pleasure of the printed page, bound well. OED 2 is one of the handsomest printing jobs I've ever seen. The cloth binding is extremely rugged and well designed, elegant and solidly conservative in physical appearance. The paper is itself bright and smooth, the font/type clear and eminently readable. Even the dust jackets are beautiful, a real improvement over the previous design. "Additions" volumes (times 3) are available for anyone interested in the vocabulary of the 90s. The 3rd edition will integrate these into the main work. But, a dictionary in the hand is worth two in the planning stage. And the beautiful volumes of the 2nd edition are available from Amazon.com at what amounts to bargain price.

Buy this wonderful, beautifully produced and enduring work; it is a treasure for life that will never fail to impress you with the alluring beauty and quirky mutability of this most glorious of languages.

141 of 149 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars This product should be banned!, August 28, 2006

By 

Gary Chase - See all my reviews

This review is from: Oxford English Dictionary: Single User Version (CD-ROM)

This program has given me nothing but headaches. It includes buggy software protection that requires that you place CD number 2 in the drive every 90 days in order for the program to run. This always occurs for me when I am traveling and do not have the CD with me. Oops, can't use the program until I get home and dig out the CD in my office.

The next problem is that even once the program has done this ridiculous 90 day check, it still may not run. This is because the copy protection conflicts with the Windows operating system and Norton Antivirus in unpredictable ways. This can result in running out of system memory or in Microsoft Word crashing when attempting to open documents, both of which require restarting my computer.

If you are lucky enough to get the program to run, you will find it has a horrible user interface, like it was written back in the late 80's. The program loads so slowly that I never bother using it to look up a single word while writing, and instead use my other dictionary programs. When the program does come up, it goes to a credits screen, so that you still must click to get to the page where you can do your searches, which wastes a few more seconds. The searches themselves return fast results, but reviewing the results is hindered by there not being any back button. So if you are looking at an entry and click on a hyperlinked term, there is no way to get back to the entry you were just viewing. This is terribly cumbersome if you want to cross-reference different entries to get a broader sense of word's meaning.

I should add that I am not a naïve user with a buggy computer. I have a recent model IBM notebook running Windows XP Professional, and I have worked as a computer technician in the past. I also do not have some hidden axe to grind with Oxford; I simply paid a reasonable chunk of money for what I thought would be a comprehensive and useable dictionary. The content is comprehensive--the very, very best--but it is nearly useless in this implementation.

Let me end my review by telling about my latest experience with this lovely program. I clicked on the dictionary to lookup a word and it wanted the CD ROM to be inserted for the copy protection check. This time, I had the disk near at hand. I placed the CD in the drive and the program read the copy protection key, but it still wouldn't run. I restarted my computer and turned off Norton Antivirus, but this did not get the program to work. I then re-installed the Oxford dictionary, which takes a long, long time, and still no luck. Finally, I went and checked the tech support page at Oxford, and evidently their program does not work with a recent Windows XP security update. Their suggestion? Uninstall the update (which Microsoft considers critical, the maximum severity level) and turn off automatic security updates for your computer. Sure, no problem. I will just open up my computer to every virus in the world so I can run a stupid program that never ran correctly in the first place. I am now relegating the Oxford Dictionary to the trash can where it rightfully belongs. So if you are considering buying this software, just keep in mind that it will not run on Windows XP if you have up-to-date security updates on your system. I also encourage you to read the Amazon reviews for the previous versions (2.0 and 3.0) of the OED CD, many of which report similar problems with the flakey copy protection used in the program. It is rare for me to write a negative review when I am disappointed with a product. But in this case it goes beyond basic dissatisfaction and feels more like I have been robbed of $250. It just boggles my mind that such an unreliable and poorly executed program exists from a major publishing house.

59 of 60 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars For your reference, December 5, 2004

By 

Edward P. Mahaney Walter (Providence, RI) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Oxford English Dictionary (20 Volume Set) (Vols 1-20) (Hardcover)

Those who, reading the below reviews, are unsure whether they should invest in the 2nd edition, or hold out for the 3rd, are advised that according to the official askoxford.com, the 3rd edition is as of this writing (late 2004) not expected to be completed until at least 2018, may run to 40+ volumes, and may or may not have a print edition. If it does, it will surely be priced and marketed only for the lavishly wealthy or for the few major research institutions that will at that point still value the luxury of print materials.