Reference Question

[gothwalk]

We have no dictionary in the house. Sure, we have many, many translating and specialist dictionaries, but no plain English dictionary. An offer has come up through work for the Penguin English Reference Collection, which contains: Dictionary Of English Grammar, Guide To Punctuation, Dictionary, Guide To Plain English, Dictionary Of English Idioms, Thesaurus, Dictionary Of Abbreviations and Crossword Dictionary, all for the princely sum of €16. Worthwhile? Or should I just go and buy the Concise Oxford English Dictionary and have done with it?

Comments

[sharikkamur.livejournal.com]

Buy the collection for 16 Euro anyway! Then buy the Concise Oxford for sheer number of words.

[cliph.livejournal.com]

`dict` meets all my linguistic needs. I use it several times a day, every day.

[hobbitblue.livejournal.com]

I really think you need the 2 volume Shorter Oxford instead... :>

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

Oh, definitely! I have it, and it is wondrous. Best birthday pressie ever!

[(Anonymous)]

I have to wonder why there's no 'both' option.

[gothwalk.livejournal.com]

Mainly because they wouldn't get enough use to be worthwhile. We've not really needed a dictionary in the last five years; it's only the chance to get the box for small enough money that's making me look into it at all.

[dorianegray.livejournal.com]

I have that set. I really only use the thesaurus, as I have a bunch of other grammar books and the New Shorter OED.

But the thesaurus is fairly good, and 16 yoyos isn't that much, and the set will tide you over until you can get a bigger dictionary. So I'd say go for it.

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

If you still have a maths account--finger tells me no, unhappily--keep an ssh tunnel open to there:

ssh -nf -L 1234:dictionary.oed.com:80 username@maths.tcd.ie sleep 86400

[I'll leave the PuTTY configuration as an exercise for the reader] and use their OED subscription from http://127.0.0.1:1234/entrance.dtl . Best dictionary of any language in the world ever, correspondingly expensive in its twenty-volume physical incarnation.

If not, spend the €16. You're not going to buy the OED [the concise one is something different], and every other dictionary out there is going to be lacking, so you may as well get the cheap one. (Try reading looking up the words you don't know from a Patrick O'Brien novel with anything other than the full OED; it won't be up to it.)

[kehoea.livejournal.com]

s/O'Brien/O'Brian/, of course.

[(Anonymous)]

the full oxford is the only way to go regarding dictionaries. we have one at home and it's used quite often, especially around crossword time and looking up words my mum claims to be right when playing word games!!

..still not sure 'tentioned' is a word though.. despite dictionary!