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zridling:
But if I had a grand to blow I'd rather spend it on the 60 volume Great Books of the Western World collection put out out by Encyclopedia Britannica. I've read a little over half of them.-40hz (June 01, 2011, 08:46 PM)
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Ha, what a great goal! I went to a liberal arts school (1980-84) where our entire Freshman year was spent reading and writing about 40 great books from that program in an Oxford Tutorial structure. Most majors took it further for the next three. That was a great, great year, indeed. And no doubt a better, cheaper "education" than offered by 95% of curricula today.

http://www.greatbooks.org/about/faq2/

tomos:
The titles they use for all the different variations of the Oxford English Dictionary are very confusing.
-superboyac (June 01, 2011, 07:21 PM)
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as you say:
http://wordweb.info/ordering.html#
click on "Show All" (dictionaries), there are two Oxfords:

Oxford Dictionary of English
3rd edition, includes audio pronunciations ($29)

and

Shorter Oxford English Dictionary
Our most authoritative offering, a third of the full 20-volume OED. ($49)

is that a bit of an English understatement - calling the medium dictionary the Shorter one.... a three volume dictionary isn't bad :)
I presume the first above is the "standard" one volume dictionary
I can see the attraction of the full 20 vol. one but wouldnt want it enough myself...

Curt:
-I agree the titles are confusing... at least, I never understood them! Not until I read your posts just now did I realize that Shorter was larger - I obviously never noticed the difference in price; my eyes and interest just stopped when I saw the shorter-word. Hmm... not too flattering [red face]. So now I must acquire the Shorter edition in order to upgrade my "definitive English dictionary reference" - Confusing, indeed!

tomos:
I think the naming is historical:

first came the 20 vol dictionary,
then the "Shorter" 3 vol one
- then they made a single volume one for the plebs and just called it the Oxford dictionary.


Note what they say here about the OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
The OED, on the other hand, is a historical dictionary and it forms a record of all the core words and meanings in English over more than 1,000 years, from Old English to the present day, and including many obsolete and historical terms. Meanings are ordered chronologically in the OED, according to when they were first recorded in English, so that senses with the earliest evidence of usage appear first and more recent senses appear further down the entry – like a ‘family tree’ for each word.
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from http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/oed

they are comparing the OED with the ODO - but dont explain what the ODO is...
*shakes head*

Curt:
Oxford Dictionaries Online

http://oxforddictionaries.com/page/what

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