When the publishing company I worked for was in the process of losing its mind, they decided to throw out all of their hard-copy references, so I picked up a free compact OED.
I also got this, which has quite the entertainment value:
Covers helpful topics like “Fire in your car,” “Menaced by a hitchhiker,” “Running aground,” “Trapped in a bog or quicksand,” “When a crowd turns ugly,” and much more, all with RD illustrations.
My father, a HS English teacher, gave out Webster’s Collegiate dictionaries – the big red hardcover – to us kids, and his nieces, as graduation presents. I somehow ended up with two, one of which I donated not long ago, but the one that still has a cover is about 5’ away from me.
The Lit & Phil library here in Newcastle has a beautiful old set of the OED. It’s Victorian (I think), approximately a dozen volumes, each 24"x18" and about 6" thick, bound in heavy black leather. They look like they belong in Unseen University (well, so does the Lit & Phil, TBH) and I covet them mightily.
Everyone should use a paper dictionary because it provides the good kind of distraction, i.e. you see additional words adjacent to the word you’re looking up and you can quickly learn some new and interesting vocab. This is the drawback of digital dictionaries–no collateral browsing.
But it’s the most useless book since “How to speak French was translated into french.”
I have one, but I haven’t touched it in ages. I’m happy with looking up what I need on online dictionaries.
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