We always had one in our home, but English was not always the language spoken there. As I was improving my English fluency, I spent a bunch of time with the OED, and it always seemed “ultimately authoritative to me”. But I acknowledge that there are other dictionaries. I actually spent a decent amount of time in my academic research looking at very old dictionaries, because descriptions of processes from historic eras use the definitions of words as they were at the time that the description was written. It can sometimes make a big difference.
One of my favorite historical nautical terms is “roving”. In the OED and modern dictionary it means “wandering”. Primarily because the song “a-roving”, which is a very old seafaring song. But originally it had nothing at all to do with wandering. Roving, is a conjugation of “to reeve”, which meant “to thread a rope through a ring or other aperture, especially a block”. So if you take the last part of the chorus to the song-
“I’ll go no more a-roving with you fair maid” (about something a sailor no longer gets to do upon his departure)
You begin to see that the song is actually intensely pornographic. And the original verses were even worse than the chorus. I will not copy them here.
I just thought that was worth mentioning. MB
