OED and Jesse in the Times Mag

[Benjamin Zimmer]

On Sat, May 10, 2008 at 3:52 PM, Laurence Horn <laurence.horn at yale.edu> wrote:
>
> http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/11/magazine/11wwln-medium-t.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
>
> Nice piece by Virginia Heffernan about the mixed feelings of
> nostalgia and reluctant acceptance in learning that there will be no
> new print editions of the OED.  Several quotes from Jesse, and
> overall thoughtfulness, but someone might suggest to Heffernan that
> even if she (and her employers at the Times) couldn't afford a
> subscription to the OED online, there would be no need to settle for
> "the dumb dictionary that came with [her] Mac operating system".

And even though Oxford University Press is no longer my employer, I
feel obliged to point out that the dictionary on the current Mac OS is
yet another Oxford product: it's an electronic version of the New
Oxford American Dictionary, 2e. Would be curious to know what exactly
Ms. Heffernan finds "dumb" about it -- perhaps simply the lack of
historical citations? Guess that makes the OED the only non-dumb
alternative.


--Ben Zimmer

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