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Comment by Myrmornis | Hacker News Reader

I miss the OED. I consulted it in my parents’ house as a teenager, and ever since I have been too lazy or cheap to acquire a copy, whether paper or otherwise. Basically I want an electronic copy, but $295 annual subscription seems steep compared to the price of paper copies ($50 it looks like). It hardly needs saying that the dictionaries freely available online are not adequate replacements.

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To be fair what you get with the $295 subscription is the _full_ OED, including all the expanded etymologies, which is 20 volumes and seems to sell for $1000.

I used to use a a bit when I was at University and they had a subscription. Having etymologies for all the words is really interesting. And it's certainly a lot more thorough than the free online dictionaries.

Unfortunately it's one of those things where the free version is "good enough", so most people won't pay for the improved version. Especially at $295/yr.

I have the full 20-ish volume print edition, which is fun to peruse sometimes if you have the shelf space for it. I got mine used for somewhere in the neighborhood of $100 on ebay, so you might check there.

I've heard about the existence of the full volume, but to date I don't think I've ever seen nor laid hands on it (if I've seen it, I think I would have remembered browsing it). I have a feeling that most people who speak English as their primary language won't even be aware of its existence.

The Encyclopædia Britannica is the only thing I've (slightly) leafed through before I started really getting online. I remember its thin pages and dry reading compared to less formal encyclopedias. I even remember pining over advertisements of the CD/DVD set and thinking about whether it'd be better to connect to the internet at home, or get the DVD of Britannica.

My mum has the compact edition, which is the full OED printed in tiny type:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compact-Oxford-English-Dictionary/d...

Yours in mildly wrecked condition for only 23 quid:

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Compact-Dictionary-COMPLETE-SLIP-CA...

Your library may provide access to members.

For example, State Library of New South Wales.

Yes. Most UK libraries have a setup so that their members can use the online OED from anywhere on the internet (you just have to enter your library card number). It uses cookies so you don't have to log in every time you want to look up a word, so the user-experience can be very convenient. I have a firefox keyword search shortcut for it.

I'm fortunate in that my (US) University has a subscription, but unlucky in that they have a poorly implemented 2-factor authentication for EVERYthing connected to the University, whose cookies disappear after 12 hours.

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