“I have always been intrigued by scrimshaw.”

This has nothing to do with, well, anything.  But I heard my wife say this to my son a few seconds ago and I was so impressed by it that I thought I’d mention it to you.

In any event.

The Compact Oxford English Dictionary (OED) is a thing of beauty.  It is a massive blue book.  It has a slipcase.  It’s heavier than a box of shoes.  It’s also nearly impossible to use.  That does not prevent it from being the most useful book in my home.

“Daddy, what’s this word mean?”

“Look it up.”

“But I know you know what it means, can’t you just tell me?”

“Tell you what, let’s break out the OED and we can look it up together.  Let me see, where did that magnifying glass get to…”

“No!  Really, that’s OK, I’ll just go look it up in my dictionary, you don’t have to get the OED.”

“It’s no trouble.  We might even learn where the word came from, and when it was first used in the English language.  OK, let me turn to…the entry for…”

“Thanks Daddy, I’m good, bye…”

(Exeunt child stage left, fiat lux)

My son called my bluff the other day.  I looked up his word and read him the entire entry.  In its entirety.  I think he tried to eat his own tongue.

This is not to say that I do not like this book.  Why, I think it is a perfectly lovely book.  Given a surfeit of loot I’d plump for the multi-volume un-shrunky version of the OED.  Just the regular binding ($995), as the blue leather binding would scream “pretentious”, don’t you think, and I could use the $5,300 I saved to buy a Vespa XLV and a canvas sack to cover my head with so no one would know I was driving a Vespa XLV.

Or I could be especially clever and spring for the Historical Thesaurus of the OED ($395) so I could not only find the word my child was looking for, but a whole raft of other words.  Words they would also have to go look up on their own.

Unless…