The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is the single most important and useful title to be published on CD ROM to date. The storage and search power of CD technology are used to the fullest. The OED is much more than the other dictionaries on CD that are on the market now. Much more! "Unabridged" only hints at the detail and scope of this huge, fascinating tool for serious wordsmiths. If you are interested in looking up the occasional word for spelling or meaning than the Random House Unabridged Dictionary or Microsoft Bookshelf will do fine. These are both very good products but just are not in the same category as the OED. If you're a serious word hound, writer, teacher, or just have an acute enjoyment of the English language than the OED is something that must be a part of your reference materials.
The OED is a unique publication for several reasons. The sheer size of the project of preparing it for CD boggles the mind and amount of information included is staggering. An entry for a word includes much more than a regular dictionary. A chronologically arranged list of quotations using the word illustrates changing meaning. Olde English uses provided not only charming and humorous insight into a word's evolution but useful information on why a word has come to have alternate meanings in different situations. The OED is a diachronic dictionary: one that defines a word in contemporary language and exhibits historical uses. The OED entertains by being a rich source of historical and sociological language history. One problem I have with this is that I find myself spending far too much time looking at alternate words, phrases and meanings and simply browsing through interesting quotations and references.
This is the Second Edition of the OED on CD, and is a result of over a century's work by lexicographers. The printed versions contains over 20 volumes and takes up several feet of shelf space. Nearly two and a half million quotations are presented. 290,500 entries attempt to cover every word in use in the English language from the middle of the twelfth century to the present. If you count variant spellings, obsolete forms, combinations and derivatives the OED includes over 616,500 words. This is without a doubt the definitive source for even technical and scientific jargon. Vulgar words are definitely included and can provide some rather entertaining moments-especially seeing how some of our current vulgarisms evolved into their present usage. The quotations displaying the use of words by different writers and publications over the years includes every conceivable type of source. Henry Miller and Beowulf and both used for quotes. Rather than define correct, prescriptive, usage of words, the OED provides descriptive uses. Henry Miller may have not used the word correctly but the OED records the usage non-judgementally.
Although fun, this is not a toy. Since beer and other less-than-scholarly pursuits constituted a large part of my educational experiences I am not personally able to explain the details available in the entries for words in the OED. However, I am capable of preparing a bullet list of features and those of you who need some of these features can see them here and, hopefully, gain a feel for the incredible amount of information available in the OED. Here then is the touted bullet list:
Status symbols
Headwords
Pronunciation
Parts of speech
Homonym numbers
Labels
Variant forms
Etymology
Combinations
Derivatives
Initialisms
Acronyms
Abbreviations
Affixes
Proper and proprietary names
Spurious words
Hopefully this description of the OED has titillated rather than intimidated you. If all this talk of "spurious words" and "homonym numbers" means something to you than you are a prime candidate for purchasing the OED. I've been fortunate enough to have examined most of the other dictionaries that are available on CD and the OED is simply another animal all together. The detail is staggering and it is the detail that makes it outstanding. The OED is outstanding as a tool for wordsmiths and is outstanding in the field of CD ROM technology. The OED is without a doubt the most important title yet to be released on CD ROM.
