The great, the glorious...

Oxford English Dictionary. I've always wanted it. I've read books about it. I've looked longingly at the website. And now, finally, I have it. It's the Shorter OED, but that doesn't matter--it's got all the words current since 1700, which ought to be good enough for me.I'll confess to being an enormous dictionary geek. It's so easy to look something up and get distracted and learn all sorts of things you never thought you needed to know. The OED is especially fun because it has all the illustrative quotations for words, from all sorts of strange places. You can make a game of finding authors you know.Books about the OED:

Reading the OED: One Man, One Year, 21,730 Pages by Ammon Shea (he had the long version)

The Professor and the Madman by Simon Winchester

The Meaning of Everything by Simon Winchester