When I was 19, my father gave me an Oxford English Dictionary, the 1971 compact edition with the 1987 supplement. Citations for every English word since the eighth century were crammed into three bulky volumes of minuscule print. I hallucinated before the speckled onion-skin pages until I discovered that the dictionary came with a magnifying glass.
That Compact Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, Complete Text Reproduced Micrographically, I realize now, represented real magnanimity on the part of Oxford University Press. Until then, the O.E.D. could run to 13 volumes, suitable only for an antiquarian with plentiful shelf space and a feather duster. The compact dictionary, which people like my dad received free from the Book-of-the-Month Club, made showoff etymology accessible, affordable and even stashable for the first time in modest American rec rooms and dens. (“Rec room,” the online O.E.D. tells us, first appeared in 1962, in the
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