Dictionary Recommendations

You’re listening to A Way with Words. I’m Grant Barrett.

And I’m Martha Barnette.

Recently, a friend asked me for a recommendation. He wanted to know what kind of dictionary to buy for his son, who’s a college freshman. And he asked me, what’s the best dictionary for my son to keep on his desk?

And, you know, the funny thing is that I hesitated for a second, and he said, well, what dictionary do you keep on your desk? And I had to think for a second and then admit, I don’t have any dictionary on my desk.

I have sort of a vague muscle memory of opening a heavy dictionary on my desk and turning the pages or pulling a big one down off the shelf. But, Grant, I really don’t do that anymore. I don’t have a dictionary on my desk.

I guarantee you his son doesn’t have a dictionary on his desk either and won’t, even if his father buys it. He’s like you and me. And most people these days who have a reason to call on a dictionary every day, we go online, don’t we?

Right. But I had to explain that if I want to look up a word, I go to onelook.com and look at the dictionaries there, the American Heritage or maybe Merriam-Webster. Or I go to the Oxford English Dictionary online.

But, of course, that costs a lot of money for a lot of people. So I was sort of at a loss for what to tell him. What would you have said?

Well, you’re headed for the territory that requires some kind of teasing out and explaining, kind of like setting up your criteria. He’s talking about a college student here. The father’s willing to spend some money, right?

And so he could go ahead and buy the paper dictionary. Sometimes they come with CD-ROMs, which is kind of close to online. But really, I would actually recommend spending the money to get the kid access to an online dictionary that’s not free because they’re better.

For example, Merriam-Webster’s Unabridged. You could buy it, but it’s also online, relatively recently updated. I think it’s 2002, 2003. It’s something like $30 a year.

Yeah, it’s not much. And it’s a better dictionary than Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate. It has etymologies, for example. It has more meanings to words, more senses, more information, more notes in general. It’s a great dictionary.

But if you do want print, and I know you’re out there, right? Three of you? Four of you? Maybe five? Both of you. You know the one that I usually recommend, right, Martha?

Yes. It’s the two-volume, shorter Oxford English Dictionary. It can be had for about $110, Amazon.com and a few other places. It’s not the full Oxford English Dictionary. They basically cut out most of the citations and a lot of the nonce words, that is words that were used once ever, you know, Chaucer used it once, so they decided to record it.

But it’s a great dictionary. It’s very complete. The 6th edition is very Americanized. It’s nice to look at. It’s easy to read. It’s a great print dictionary.

And, again, if you’re willing to spend the money, it’s the one to have. If you’re not willing to spend more than $100 on a dictionary, then I would recommend the Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate.

This is one that’s going to work for most of your puzzling and most of your gaming. It’s going to work for any kind of ordinary book that you’re reading. But if you’re reading Tolkien or Dorothy Dunnett, you’ve got to have a better dictionary, you know, because they have very highly specialized vocabulary that just the collegiate dictionary is just not going to be complete enough to do.

Yeah. Well, if you have a question about dictionaries or language or buzzwords or grammar or word origins or slang, dial us up. The number is 1-877-929-9673. That’s 1-877-W-A-Y-W-O-R-D.

Or shoot us an email. The address is words@waywordradio.org.