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aldean's review against another edition
5.0
One of the most fantastic investments I have ever made. The bulk of my high school graduation gift money went to ordering this two-volume treasure directly from the publisher (it was on sale!) and solidifying the Anglophiliac bent to my logomania.
I won't go so far as to say this is THE dictionary for personal use (I haven't tried them all yet), but it is right up there, especially for people who need authoritative access to a vast array of words at all hours of the day and night. In twelve years of heavy use I can recall only twice where I failed to find a ridiculously-obscure word within these covers, which is a track record that I am completely satisfied with. The binding has held up very well, and it is still sufficiently manageable for my wife and I to cuddle around on a lazy Saturday morning.
My only real complaint: the lack of syllabication. In most of my prose I shun hyphenation, but when I was desktop-publishing a newsletter it was essential to be able to squeeze my verbosity into columns, and these tomes offered me no assistance. A minor quibble, but it does mar the perfection a tiny bit.
There may be a better dictionary for me out there yet, but even if I could find it, I can't imagine I could afford to own it.
I won't go so far as to say this is THE dictionary for personal use (I haven't tried them all yet), but it is right up there, especially for people who need authoritative access to a vast array of words at all hours of the day and night. In twelve years of heavy use I can recall only twice where I failed to find a ridiculously-obscure word within these covers, which is a track record that I am completely satisfied with. The binding has held up very well, and it is still sufficiently manageable for my wife and I to cuddle around on a lazy Saturday morning.
My only real complaint: the lack of syllabication. In most of my prose I shun hyphenation, but when I was desktop-publishing a newsletter it was essential to be able to squeeze my verbosity into columns, and these tomes offered me no assistance. A minor quibble, but it does mar the perfection a tiny bit.
There may be a better dictionary for me out there yet, but even if I could find it, I can't imagine I could afford to own it.
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