This isn’t enshittification, it was always a paid service. The extortionate price is aimed at universities and is sadly typical for anglophone academic pricings.
Anyway, OED is useful for scholarly purposes. Most users need a normal, smaller dictionary, not OED-level of detail. That’s fulfilled by dicts such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate edition (at merriam-webster.com) and Oxford Dictionary of English (yes that’s different from Oxford English Dictionary).
If you really need OED, you can pirate the 2nd edition, since it was published as a program on CD. It’s on Rutracker, IIRC. Let me know if you can’t find it.
Well, you can use it to check spellings too. Medieval and early modern spellings, even. Sometimes when seeing pedantic people online correcting others’ spellings, I used to check OED and find old texts where the “misspelling” existed normally. Ideally the first editions of Shakespeare, with forms such as “scornfull” instead of scornful, etc. So the pedants would either have to admit it’s not such a big mistake, or Shakespeare was illiterate too.
Anyway, yeah it’s drama for its own sake.
OTOH the price is too high, but that’s normal for English academic publications in general. It’s a very rotten market that’s not really aimed at individual buyers but at university libraries.
This isn’t enshittification, it was always a paid service. The extortionate price is aimed at universities and is sadly typical for anglophone academic pricings.
Anyway, OED is useful for scholarly purposes. Most users need a normal, smaller dictionary, not OED-level of detail. That’s fulfilled by dicts such as Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate edition (at merriam-webster.com) and Oxford Dictionary of English (yes that’s different from Oxford English Dictionary).
If you really need OED, you can pirate the 2nd edition, since it was published as a program on CD. It’s on Rutracker, IIRC. Let me know if you can’t find it.
I feel like the people complaining here have no idea how much work is involved in compiling and maintaining the OED.
This is a full reference of the English language intended for academics and professional contexts, not just a place to check spelling.
Well, you can use it to check spellings too. Medieval and early modern spellings, even. Sometimes when seeing pedantic people online correcting others’ spellings, I used to check OED and find old texts where the “misspelling” existed normally. Ideally the first editions of Shakespeare, with forms such as “scornfull” instead of scornful, etc. So the pedants would either have to admit it’s not such a big mistake, or Shakespeare was illiterate too.
Anyway, yeah it’s drama for its own sake.
OTOH the price is too high, but that’s normal for English academic publications in general. It’s a very rotten market that’s not really aimed at individual buyers but at university libraries.
Aren’t there a bunch of old professors in some old English university doing that, paid by the government?
I’m so disappointed 😞