Maud Newton, literary femme fatale and all-around delight, blogs (and twitters! how progressive) from the 80th anniversary of the Oxford English Dictionary.
Biggest development? The third edition of the 20-volume set of the Oxford English Dictionary will also be its last! After publication of “the first comprehensive and up-to-date edition of the OED in one alphabetical sequence since the original edition of 1928″, the OED will (figuratively) close all 20 of its covers and move on to a bigger and brighter future as an internet-only text.
My prediction: the next groundbreaking dictionary to box up its dusty, leather cover in favor of a more hip internet form will be the Urban Dictionary. Oh, wait…
Is the OED’s move to an exclusively electronic form good or bad? Will this spell the end of civilization’s erudite ability to trace the exact diachronous history of a word? Or simply the proletarianization of mankind’s intelligence? You decide.
This has actually been a long time coming. Here is a really fascinating video behind the thought processes behind that decision.
Erin Mckean – Editor of the OED on the future of dictionaries.
http://www.ted.com/index.php/talks/erin_mckean_redefines_the_dictionary.html
I think it’s great, and (as Erin mentions in the video) the next frontier for the OED is to arm regular people with the power to define our language, amateur lexicography.
It makes good sense from a usability point of view. But it’s also sad. I really love my impractically huge copy of the Compact OED despite not having a shelf large enough for it so it has to sit on the floor where it’s too heavy to pick up and when I do open it, the small print (at 1.2pt) being too small to read even with my reading specs and the magnifying glass. I would love to own (and have space for) the 20 volume full size edition. But would I use it? I’d probably still use the Internet version as a first option.
[...] the excellent On Purpose comes word that the OED is going to be an Internet based dictionary after its third [...]