Goodbye Printed OED (Oxford English Dictionary)
THE 20-VOLUME OXFORD English Dictionary is a totem-like symbol of mystical multiple-shelf-spanning lexicographic power. But when the third edition is completed sometime in the next decade or so, there might not be anything physical on the bookshelves to show off.
The print dictionary market is just disappearing; it is falling away by tens of percent a year, print dictionaries in general might vanish completely within 30 years.
Oxford publishes many print dictionaries apart from the OED, such as the one-volume Oxford Dictionary of English, a two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, and even a microprinted Compact OED that comes with a reading glass, plus many others. They could continue to print any or all of these well into the future, even if the 3rd edition of the OED goes digital-only.
But just as few publishers 10 years ago could have predicted today’s mosaic of electronic publishing options, Oxford can’t know with any certainty what format, print or digital, will be best suited for tomorrow’s readers. You could be reading the next OED on your 100TB Virtual mini Kindle or sitting inside a virtual 3-D holographic dictionary world, you may even install it in your own brain for all we know. Let’s just hope the people at Oxford finish it in the next decade as they have claimed. The first print edition was expected to take ten years to publish, it actually took 70.
Read more for some amazing facts about the OED
Just how big is the OED?
How many words are in it and how do new words get chosen?
What Chinese words are in the OED? Are words like “tu hao” “chinglish” in the OED?
All these and much more in second part of this episode.
"As sheer casual reading matter,
I still find the English dictionary
the most interesting book
in our language."
Albert Jack Nock