Lost in a good dictionary
According to a recent PR squib, the Oxford English Dictionary has set up a new feature for subscribers. They've added to the subscriber page a "Lost for Words" button, which allows for random browsing through the online version of the dictionary. Jasper Fforde, eat your heart out.
For those unfortunate souls who do not have institutional or personal subscriptions ($295 a year!), there's always the Word Of The Day via e'mail. I wonder how long it would take to accumulate the text of the complete dictionary by this means?
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1 comment:
Fiend @ 1:23PM | 2004-09-22| permalink
*finds handy online time conversion tool*
According to their site, the OED "provides authoritative definitions of over 500,000 words". At a rate of one word a day, and given that the OED is updated every so often, you'd probably need, oh, around 14-15 centuries to amass a complete text.
Perhaps the $295/year is worth it?
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Felix @ 3:30PM | 2004-09-22| permalink
Are you using the legal definition of "conversion" there?
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Fiend @ 4:11PM | 2004-09-23| permalink
Nah, the inner science/math geek in me penned that comment. The budding inner law geek is forbidden from dispensing legal advice (or, at least, that's just a useful excuse).
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