The Oxford English Dictionary May Not Be Printed Again

The Oxford English Dictionary, the definitive guide to the English language, will likely not be printed again according to Oxford University Press, the publisher of the dictionary. The third edition, which is still at least a decade away, may only be available online if there is no demand for the printed version.

The second edition of the Oxford English Dictionary was published in 1989. It's a 20-volume set weighing in at about 750 pounds.

It costs about $1,000 to buy in full, which would probably explain why it only sold about 30,000 sets in total, in the past two decades.

But the publisher says that the market for print is shrinking fast and that by the time the third edition is completed, there may be no interest whatsoever in a print version.

Instead, all of the content will be available online. The web has made it trivial to look up words and the number of rather high-quality dictionaries out there has made the print versions obsolete in terms of practicality.

Even those owning the entire Oxford English Dictionary regularly use the web for a quick look-up rather than skimming trough the books. And with the print world in general feeling the pressure, a highly-specialized and expensive product like the OED, with an overwhelmingly practical nature, isn't likely to find to many buyers.

And this is today, the upcoming third edition of the OED is still a decade away. So far, the researchers are about 28 percent done. However, updates are regularly published to the website, with the next batch slated for September.

The online version is available with a $295 a year subscription. While the price may seem exceedingly steep for a website, it manages to get about 2 million visits per month.

A print version may still be published if there is enough interest. But the way things are moving, the website as well as e-book versions may be the only ways of getting it, ten years from now. Oxford University Press will continue to publish its other, smaller dictionaries.