yanoblog

When life imitates mockery…

To deal with my sadness at the long slow decline of Cool Tools, a blog of sorts about actually useful tools, I have begun reviewing their poorer choices.

In my second drool tools posting I mocked the Dictionary of Symbols by creating my own fictional, as-far-as-I-could-tell-ridiculous Cool Tool: The Compact Edition of the OED.

Before continuing, you should read that post. I’ll wait.

<tapping fingers>

Ah good, you’re back. Here’s why I asked you to do that.

Today’s Cool Tools posting is the Compact Oxford English Dictionary. No, really. I swear.

Let’s compare descriptions. I thought about doing this as a puzzle (guess the real Cool Tools posting), but why bother? I can’t touch this kind of prose:

The classic, Compact OED is a smaller, handy version of what is the best English dictionary, bar none, the famous OED. Because it’s photo-reduced, it contains the entire OED, all 20 large volumes in one convenient reference (it comes with a reading glass). Aside from saving space on your shelf, it’s also significantly cheaper. It’s quite large, but you could definitely fit it in a regular backpack, if you’re a student or need to transport it (although it is about 10 pounds!). I’ve been using it for 3 years now, at least twice a week for general queries, as I enjoy discovering and using obscure words and I also often look up words and dive into etymology as part of my Wikipedia editing. For example, recently I used my OED to look up an archaic usage of the word “quaint”. Apparently Andrew Marvell’s “To His Coy Mistress” makes use of the old meaning where “quaint” also refers to female anatomy. Who knew?!

Carrying it around in a backpack?! Look, I love books as much as the next person, but carrying around the OED seems a bit… extreme to me. I don’t think you should pick your dictionaries based on portability. If that really is important to you, buy the CDROM.

Also, if you are just going to use it to augment your vocabulary, consider subscribing to the OED Word of the Day.

Anyway – you read it here first – the OED is a Cool Drool Tool.