CompuServe Thread

Last year, I saw, in the Atlantic Magazine, copies of the "compact edition" of the OED offered for mail order at $199. This was a boxed, two volume set, which came packaged with a magnifying glass so that you could read it's small type. My old reliable, (Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary, 1973, published prior to when Webster's decided that college student's couldn't read, and therefor re-wrote their dictionary in tabloid style,) contains little information on the origins of words. So I have used it for checks on spelling, and word usage for the past 19 years, referring to the OED in the Library when I needed to investigate the origins of a word, or word usage in English as spoken and written outside the U.S. As I pursue advanced studies in Clinical Psychology and Psychoanalysis, I find more and more reasons to delve more deeply into the words that I use, and read. To have the full OED on a CD-ROM, or in print, would be for me, a dream come true. It would save me trips to the library. Having it would free me from nights where I pursue a line of thinking, only to be stopped by something like, "I have to look up that word in the OED prior to completing this chain of thought. There is a helicopter hovering outside my window. o