NOPE NOPE NOOOOOPE fuck that man.

  • ɯᴉuoʇuɐ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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    2 hours ago

    You couldn’t do that, OED is so massive they’re not even printing it anymore. Old sets are on Amazon for $1000+

    It’s weird to talk about “the dictionary”, there’s no single default dictionary, they’re all different and this is a dictionary for specialists. It’s a historical dictionary, so it covers words and their usage from up to a millenium ago (although IIRC it doesn’t include words that haven’t survived into Modern English, so 400-ish years ago).

    • Catoblepas@piefed.blahaj.zone
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      2 hours ago

      Oxford sells abridged dictionaries for under $10. 99% of people aren’t using it for 20 encyclopedias worth of etymological research, they’re using it to figure out how to spell a word or what it means.

      • ɯᴉuoʇuɐ@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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        2 hours ago

        Exactly, so why all the fuss about the inaccessibility of OED? Most people don’t need OED in particular, spellings and most relevant meanings can be checked in normal smaller dictionaries (although these days autocorrect solves most spelling problems before people would even think of checking a dictionary, and people even treat Google as a dictionary because it provides definitions when needed).

        Not that the pricing isn’t awful and likely overblown, but that’s a different story.