The Oxford English Dictionary : second edition (20 Volumes Set) Hardcover – Abridged, 30 Mar. 1989

This is truly a masterpiece. I ordered this for my husband's birthday. He loves it. It weighed 60 kilos and the delivery was excellent. I recommend this for anyone who is interested in the English language, who writes, or who just wants to leaf through a fascinating history of the language.

I have to say I approached this with an open mindedness but I'm sorry it's just too way out there. There's no hint of plot and the characters are few and far between, and when they are thier they are sketched out really poorly. The awethor seems to have plumpted for some kind of OULIPO-type constraint starting each sentence with a word that comes after the next alphabetically. But its a step-too-far for me, I think. It's just too much experimentally thinking. Worse than that Donald DeLillo.I got to about half-way threw and then just had to put it down.

A superb publication, indispensable to all lovers of English. I would thus recommend it to all those who care about English.

Although I have multiple dictionaries in the house, including many of the Oxford ones, this is the one I love using the most. OK, looking up a word takes much longer than the CD or the online version, but the act of looking it up and reading an entry in a proper physical book makes me much more likely to remember it.It's sad that OUP have said that version 3 will never be printed; this fact means I value this version all the more.Finally, others have complained about the space the 20 volumes take up. In my case they fit perfectly in a tall IKEA wardrobe in the corner of my room - no problem.

Four heavy volumes are included in each package, which is just regular corrugated cardboard held together with narrow plastic packing straps, so almost every corner of every volume is buckled, and quite a lot of the pages, too. Most of the boxes were burst open, so if the weather had been wet the books would have been ruined.(I tried to put these comments in "packaging feedback" but because Amazon.co.uk delegated the order to Amazon EU they won't accept feedback!)

Writing this on the day of delivery by Arrow, so I've not had time to read but the books look good. 4 out of 5 of the boxes they arrived in were soaking wet on top or bottom, soaked through to the books. Fortunately each book is individually shrink-wrapped, so no damage has been found.

.I f you love words, their meanings and origins, (and you've got a few quid or dollars to spare — and have got the shelf space), you've just got to get yourself a hardcopy set of the OED.With the world of words rapidly going on-line, this definitive 20-volume lexicon of the English language will in a generation or so almost certainly become a collector's item if not a museum piece.The OED is an incredible record of 19th and 20th Century Anglophone civilization, and deserves to become a treasured heirloom by our grandchildren and further generations in this new Millennium.Dictionaries are much more than spellcheckers and crossword puzzle solvers. A dictionary like the OED has its real power and value in its use as an etymological tool. It’s the origin of words and where they were first used that gives us a fundamental understanding of our language.For lovers of Shakespeare there are references to words first appearing in his works on almost every page of the OED. A great on-line project would be to hyperlink a "Complete Works" of the Bard to the OED with all the non-common words he uses.One word of warning to book lovers and potential owners of the OED ---- Make sure your four feet of shelf space is well shielded from direct sunlight. Those gorgeous royal blue fly-covers will fade very quickly if over exposed to UV.If you were given the choice of what books you could take to that hypothetical desert island, the OED would have to be the linguaphiles choice. It is the perfect encapsulation and guide to what our language and culture is all about.As a footnote you have to admire that quirky but subtle British humour that shines through even in the serious world of dictionary publishing. Check out the spines of Volumes VII and XVII where they are indexed with the first and last word in each volume.In Volume VII we have " Hat -- Intervacuum ". Is the OED subtly telling us what lurks under a Stetson? Volume XVI is indexed from " Soot -- Styx'. Is this evidence that there is a hot and smoky welcome on the other side of that river between here and hell?

This is a colossal, epic work, and one which is absolutely beautiful. The overriding feeling is one of gratitude and awe at the scale of what has been done here. Certainly the greatest dictionary in any language - and it's in ours. So get it at once.