Quotes About OED

One of the questions I hear most often regarding my plan to read the OED from cover to cover is "Why don't you just read it on the computer?" I usually respond as if the questions was "Why don't you just slump yourself on the couch and watch TV for the year?" which is not quite an appropriate reponse. It is not so much that I am anicomputer; I am resolutely and stubbornly pro-book.

Kankedort (n.) An awkward situation or affair. I take comfort in the fact that even when the editors of the OED do not have the answer to something, they manage to impart this lack of knowledge in a particularly graceful fashion, thereby diffusing what would otherwise be a bit of a kankedort. The etymology for this work reads "of unascertained etymology". see also: zugzwang

The OED, more so than any other dictionary, encompasses the entire history of the modern English language. By so doing it also encompasses all of English's glories and foibles, the grand concepts and whimsical conceits that make our language what it is today.

The bridge between the words glamour and grammar is magic. According to the OED, glamour evolved through an ancient association between learning and enchantment.

Yet it has 58 uses as a noun, 126 as a verb, and 10 as a participial adjective. Its meanings are so various and scattered that it takes the OED 60,000 words—the length of a short novel—to discuss them all. A foreigner could be excused for thinking that to know set is to know English.

Of the approximately 27,000 words identified in the OED as having first been used between 1250 and 1450, more than a fifth have French origins, and more than three-quarters of these are nouns.43 About half of all words in common use are nouns, and the introduction of new nouns – so many of them material – marks the discovery of new things, new experiences, new attitudes. Nouns