This 20 Volume Print Edition of Oxford English Dictionary Is The Last

Call it the end of an era. The NYT says that Oxford University Press has no official plans to publish a new print edition of the multi-volume Oxford English Dictionary often considered as the authority on the usage and meaning of English words and phrases.

Visit BBC and Wikipedia to learn more about the interesting history of Oxford Dictionary the first edition of which took nearly 70 years to complete. If you have never seen the print edition dictionary before, check this sample page from the dictionary. The dictionary weighs 62.6 kilos or 137.72 lbs.

Oxford University Press will instead focus on the online and CD-ROM edition of the Oxford English dictionary. The planned Third Edition of the OED is expected to finish sometime around 2018 but will only be available electronically.

The first edition of Oxford English Dictionary was published under James Murray see here at work.