As the title suggests, I recently received the perfect gift that any writer could get: a dictionary. But this was not just any dictionary. This was a copy of The Compact Oxford English Dictionary.

Big whoop, I hear some of you say. Well, actually, it is.

The Oxford English Dictionary (2nd Edition) is a 20-volume beast. No joke. Published in 1989, it clocked in at 21,728 pages. And that doesn’t include all the supplement materials that have since been added. The 3rd Edition is still in production and is not expected to be published until 2037. I hate to think how big the Oxford English Dictionary will be by then.Read More→