Tuesday, January 17, 2006

Free OED (for a limited time only!)

Via Language-Hat, I see that the new BBC TV show, Balderdash and Piffle (about which I know nothing), is offering free online OED searches from now until February 13. It's on a bit of an odd pattern, though: for the most part you can only search the current "letter of the week" -- as I type it's N. (Very Sesame Street, if you ask me.) But for 48 hours every week -- 21:30 GMT on Mondays to 21:30 GMT on Wednesdays (that's 4:30 p.m. on Monday to 4:30 p.m. on Wednesday for us East-coast folks) -- you can search the whole OED. For free.

So if you'll excuse me, I need to go look up a word or two...

(I actually own a dead-trees version of the OED, so theoretically this shouldn't be such a big deal, but it's a bit of a pain what with the microscopic print (even with the accompanying magnifying glass), flipping through the huge, unwieldy volume and so on...)

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