Here, Webster’s Collegiate 10th on my desk, black’s Law (rarely used) on my shelves.
At home, a whole bunch of them, including a big Webster’s unabridged. That’s the one the kids use, cause we have an ongoing deal, if they can identify a word I don’t know and use it in a sentence, I give them a buck.
1-57820-053-9
Here is the book at Amazon.com. They have it for about the same price I paid in my book club.
I’ve found some other interesting entries:
***Terabyte:***From the Greek Tera, meaning “monster”, and the English bite, meaning “a small amount of food”. A unit of measurement for physical data storage equal to 2[sup]40[/sup] (roughly a trillion bytes).
It also offers the following table:
KB = Kilobyte = 2[sup]10[/sup] bytes
MB = Megabyte = 2[sup]20[/sup] bytes
GB = Gigabyte = 2[sup]30[/sup] bytes
TB = Terabyte = 2[sup]40[/sup] bytes
PB = Petabyte = 2[sup]50[/sup] bytes
EB = Exabyte = 2[sup]60[/sup] bytes
ZB = Zettabyte = 2[sup]70[/sup] bytes
YB = Yottabyte = 2[sup]80[/sup] bytes
One googolbyte equals 2[sup]100[/sup] bytes.
To put things in perspective, a terabyte holds a 100-byte record for every person on Earth, as well as an index of those records, or a JPEG compressed pixel for every square meter of land on Earth (more than enough to create a high resolution photograph of the entire land surface of the planet). It can also hold 1 billion business letters which would otherwise fill 150 miles of bookshelf space, or ten million JPEG images which would be enough to provide ten days & nights of continuous video.
And yes I am working today.
Ditto here with the C.O.D., and a fine little Richardsnary it is!
I just realized, upon reading this thread, that I only own one dictionary–and that one isn’t an English dictionary. It’s my pocket Oxford Latin Dictionary, which happens to be right beside my computer here at the office. (I’m attempting to write a Gregorian chant for a game.) I don’t use dictionaries much, having often been accused of being a living one myself.
Along the lines of Attrayant’s offering (which I will probably buy soon), I do have the Jargon Dictionary bookmarked.
Somehow, I just know that I’ll spot a misspelled word in this post as soon as I post it…
Right here holds up dictionary. Webster’s Universal College Dictionary. It’s not the greatest dictionary, but my parents gave it to me for Christmas a couple of years ago. When I clean, it gets put back in the bookshelf, but it’s usually less than a week before I pull it out and leave it by the computer again.
Other books that follow this pattern: Roget’s Super Thesaurus (I use this to look up more common synonyms to the ten-dollar words that my brain generates), The Order of Things, Dictionary of Word Origins (the only one that hasn’t migrated back to the computer yet).
I mourn the loss of my Seventh New Collegiate. It was outdated, but it had rhymes, common given names, and other cool things.
I have some Webster’s (9th?) in my office. At home we use the American Heritage Dictionary, plus my Official Scrabble Player’s Dictionary is never far from reach. I got my spouse the Franklin Talking Dictionary (about $100) that has over 100,000 words. He loves it, always has it within reach when he’s reading the NYT.
RealityChuck and I have pretty much the same library. Pretty scary!
At work, I use dictionaries and style guides primarily to irritate the people whose work I edit. These writers are technical people - a good thing - who have no ear for language - a bad thing, when they’re contributing to reports that are likely to get public scrutiny. And many of them have fixed ideas about usage, based on what they sort of remember from grade school. Writers rarely disagree with my edits on technical grounds (I work hard not to change meaning), but if I say something that the writer’s third grade teacher called a mistake, I have to justify it. So I basically use dictionaries and style guides to illustrate the wide variety of things that are correct in language and usage. Writers who regard grammar and usage as a series of Thou shalt nots sometimes find my justifications irritating.
Yep, right here.
Random House Webster’s College Dictionary.
Also have a Childrens Dictionary around here somewhere.
On the coffee table, about 8 ft behind me. Webster’s NewWorld Dictionary. Second College Edition.
Within reach, American Heritage.
Let’s see…
Black’s Law Dictionary
Barron’s Law Dictionary
Langenscheidt Pocket Merriam Webster Dictionary
and I use dictionary.com
Tibs
Webster’s New World, 2nd College Edition (upstairs) … It’s leather-bound and really nice, although I rarely use it so I can’t really say how it is with words.
And of course my Larousse French/English “mini-dictionnaire” . which is pretty amazing for a pocket dictionary… it’s about 3 by 5 (truly pocket-sized) with 40,000 translations… I’ve never looked up a word that wasn’t in it - for example it has separate definitions for tennis, tennis ball, tennis court, and tennis racket. Also it has little blurbs about French culture scattered throughout and such amusing translations as maf(f)ia - mafia (la Maf(f)ia sicilienne - the Mafia) . It’s so cute and lovable :o)
Also I’m pretty sure my dad has a Black’s Law Dictionary around here somewhere (mainly used for step aerobics)
Within reach? Okay, within reach I have:
Oxford Canadian Dictionary
Oxford Concise Dictionary
The Penguin Canadian Dictionary
Gage’s Canadian Senior Dictionary
Webster’s New Collegiate Dictionary
Brewerer’s Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Phrase and Fable
The Penguin Spelling Dictionary
Le Robert Micro (French)
and if I turn around, just out of regular reach is:
Collins French/English Dictionary
Roget’s Thesaurus
The Bloomsbury Dictionary of Grammar
The New Webster’s Grammar Guide
Funk & Wagnalls Standard Hanbook of Synonyms, Antonyms & Prepositions
and several Style Guides (Chicago, CP…) and references on editing Canadian English.
At my feet i have the Oxford Illustrated Dictionary- very useful in GD, etc.
Right here at my home office:
Black’s Law Dictionary, Oxford Concise + Thesaurus, Websters, and an old medical dictionary I picked up at a garage sale. Illustrated, so it makes for fun reading!
I also have a ton of foreign language ones: English-Spanish/Hungarian/Turkish/French/Arabic/Spanish, and Greek.
Right by the computer I’ve got The New American Webster Handy College Dictionary circa 1972 and The Bantam College French & English Dictionary. I’ve also got a copy of Roget’s College Thesaurus (I don’t know why they’re college editions, cuz even though I’m in college, I didn’t buy them). I just use these to quickly look things up, though. I’ve got a huge Oxford’s that I use if I have to seriously look anything up. It’s the kind that’s also got multiple other dictionaries in it (slang, biology, a few languages, etc.).
On my desk here I have a Merriam Webster Reference Set containing a dictionary, thesaurus, and spelling dictionary, which my middle school gave me upon graduation. In the drawer of the desk there is a pocket-sized Oxford Popular Dictionary, because my husband doesn’t trust my “silly American” dictionaries.
Random House Unabridged, 2nd edition. Webster’s New Universal Unabridged Dictionary (published by Dorset & Baber). And so many foreign language dictionaries that I don’t want to type them all in: Spanish, French, Hebrew, Chinese, Japanese, Korean…
When online I use http://www.m-w.com, and I also have a Franklin Wordmaster that I never use.
Just within reach: 3 German-English (Pons, Langenscheidt, Business terms), 2 German only (Duden, Wahrig), 1 English only (Random House).
Just out of reach: Too many to count!
One: On my computer, I have Merriam-Websters Collegiate Dictionary/Thesaurus, version 3.11. I have no idea how many entries there are; it’s big.
Two: On my desk within an arm’s length is the Webster’s New World Dictionary, put out by Simon and Schuster about 15-20 years ago. My parents got it originally via Reader’s Digest…we were sent some promotional flyer from them advertising the dictionary. I asked mom if we needed a new dictionary; she said yes. Well, then, I checked the Yes box, and much to mom’s amusement, we got a dictionary. It’s now mine.
Three: I have an enormous Spanish-English dictionary on the bookshelf…it’s quite a bit thicker than the Webster’s.
Out of reach, I have two pocket dictionaries, a pocket thesaurus, a pocket Spanish-English dictionary, and a Spanish-English computerized dictionary on one of my computers at school.