[HN Gopher] From aardvark to woke: inside the Oxford English Dic...
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From aardvark to woke: inside the Oxford English Dictionary
Author : memorable
Score : 51 points
Date : 2022-07-04 05:31 UTC (17 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.newstatesman.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.newstatesman.com)
| mistrial9 wrote:
| controversy sells tickets -- news at 11
| Hayvok wrote:
| People aren't giving the article a full shake - you need to read
| past the first three paragraphs. The agonizing over woke terms is
| trying to show the rigor of the lexicographers & that they are
| trying their best to keep the work current with modern English
| speakers.
|
| The rest was really interesting - I wasn't aware of the history
| of the OED, and this article gives a decent intro & dive into the
| process.
|
| Some selections I found interesting--
|
| > By the time the complete first edition was published in 1928,
| at a length of 16,000 pages, more than 70 years had passed... It
| was already out of date
|
| > "Our histories, our novels, our poems, our plays - they are all
| in this one book," said Stanley Baldwin, the then prime minister,
| at a dinner to mark the completion of the first edition.
|
| > Having an open mind is essential for the role. "When you're a
| lexicographer, if you hear a word that you've never heard before,
| you don't go, 'Ew, yuck, what's that?' You go, 'Hmm, that's
| interesting, why did they say it like that?' You want to learn
| more.
|
| > The OED has never turned a profit: by 1911 the university press
| had spent PS150,000 on it and made less than PS60,000 in sales.
| Today's revision programme is backed by PS34m in funding
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > The team decided against labelling Terf "offensive", instead
| explaining in a usage note that it might be considered so; it was
| felt that this "was a bit more nuanced than just slapping on
| 'derogatory' or 'chiefly derogatory'".
|
| Is this not just playing sides? AFAIK very few TERFs call
| themselves that, nor do they consider the description accurate.
| implements wrote:
| "Terf" is very definitely used as a slur, at least in the UK -
| people labelled Terf in my experience usually describe
| themselves as "Gender Critical".
| tsimionescu wrote:
| A word that describes a group whose beliefs you oppose does
| not become a slur by virtue of you using it in opposition. If
| some people view the Tories or any association with them or
| their paltform in a very negative light, that doesn't mean
| that calling Theresa May "a tory" is using a slur about her.
| Just like calling France's Jean-Luc Melanchon "a socialist"
| is not a slur against him, even if spoken by someone who
| despises socialism. This remains true even if they prefer
| slightly different terms.
|
| At worst, calling someone by a label that doesn't correctly
| define them, and that you mean pejoratively, may be
| considered an insult, but not a slur - say, calling Barack
| Obama a socialist, or calling Tony Blair a tory.
| wikfwikf wrote:
| You used the term when saying 'very few TERFs call
| themselves..'. Did you intend to be offensive, or was it just
| the easiest way to describe a certain group of people?
| Chris2048 wrote:
| I refer to the group to which the term is applied.
| wikfwikf wrote:
| Yes, this is how most words work.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| No it isn't, and it's specifically what you asked - the
| group that the term is applied to in 3rd party, as
| opposed to a self label, is the group I'm referring to.
| Dan_Sylveste wrote:
| You wrote:
|
| >Did you intend to be offensive, or was it just the
| easiest way to describe a certain group of people?
|
| Did you find what they wrote offensive? It isn't clear.
|
| If yes, what aspect of their writing (what particular
| phrase or word, when considered with/in the appropriate
| context) was offensive?
|
| If you in particular didn't find what they wrote
| offensive but believe that others might find it
| offensive, what aspect of their writing (what particular
| phrase or word, when considered with/in the appropriate
| context) do you believe that others would find offensive?
| tsimionescu wrote:
| The OP claimed that the word TERF is clearly offensive,
| citing as evidence that "very few TERFs call themselves
| that".
|
| The GP was pointing out that the OP's own use of the word
| "TERF" is counter-evidence to their original claim,
| unless OP was indeed meaning to bring offense.
|
| Essentially, it would be like saying "the n-word is
| obsiously offensive, most n-words don't call themsleves
| that".
|
| If you truly find the word offensive, you just don't use
| it to refer to the people it is meant to offend. The fact
| that OP didn't use another word to refer to this group is
| evidence that this is one of the best words we have for
| describing the group that it describes.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > Essentially, it would be like saying
|
| except the n-word is considered so offensive, it's
| offensive in any context, hence why you said "n-word",
| which is not at all true for "TERF".
|
| > GP was pointing out that..
|
| is this different from "claiming"? because I disagree
| with this point; burden is on you to demonstrate that
| this constitutes "counter evidence".
| cuteboy19 wrote:
| usually offensive, agreed
| coffeeblack wrote:
| The term is originally intended to be offensive. To split the
| "good lesbians" from the "evil lesbians". But I'm not
| surprised that people try to rewrite history on this one too.
| cmeacham98 wrote:
| It takes 30 seconds on Google to disprove this:
|
| > It was meant to be a deliberately technically neutral
| description of an activist grouping. We wanted a way to
| distinguish TERFs from other RadFems with whom we engaged
| who were trans*-positive/neutral
|
| Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF (which
| references https://read.dukeupress.edu/tsq/article-
| abstract/3/1-2/254/9...)
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I don't believe so, the term has often been used in self-
| description.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I don't understand how a term which almost perfectly
| describes the group it describes can be offensive to that
| group.
|
| What specifically is offensive about being called a "Trans-
| exclusionary radical feminist"? The idea that they are
| radical feminists? Or the idea that they are seeking to
| exclude trans women from female discourse (and often
| forcibly seeking to include trans men)?
|
| Now sure, if I used this term to refer to someone like
| Donald Trump, I would understand why he would be offended
| at being called a radical feminist, but the people who are
| seeking to label this "a slur" are exactly radical
| feminists like JK Rowling who happen to also hate trans
| identities.
|
| This reminds me of the billionaire who was claiming
| "billionaire" has become a slur since people use it with a
| negative connotation. If you're a billionaire and people
| happen to not like billionaires, they're not being
| offensive when they're calling you that.
|
| It doesn't even have the mocking grandiose tone of the
| "Warrior" in SJW used to describe people who are commenting
| online...
|
| Note: this is not the same as slurs like the infamous
| n-word, since those were designed as insults, often
| referring to a hated/perceived as inferior natural
| characteristic or a mocking comparison. They were not
| descriptive terms referring to beliefs of a group that the
| speaker disagreed with.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| tsimionescu wrote:
| I explained at the end why this is not remotely the same.
|
| The color of your skin is not a charcateristic that
| describes your deeply held beliefs, and it is not
| something that you could change about yourself. Not to
| mention, the n-word has a long history of being used
| explicitly to demean and de-humanize and oppress the
| people it describes.
|
| Few are demeaning, dehumanizing, and definitely not
| oppressing TERFs. There are not, and have never been,
| laws that declare a TERF to value 3/5 of a man or be
| forbidden from drinking water from the same water
| fountain.
|
| Please don't compare a word describing someone's explicit
| beliefs to the n-word.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| notahacker wrote:
| Whilst it's generally applied to self-identified
| feminists whose concept of feminism excludes transpeople
| as a matter of fact, and even the "radical" bit is more a
| nod to how second-wave feminists approached politics
| rather than mockery, if a term is pretty much exclusively
| applied to an outgroup by people who really don't like
| that outgroup (and the acronym itself is pretty much
| exclusively pejorative) there's a pretty good case for it
| being offensive. Especially in a debate over identity.
|
| Don't see any reason to use euphemistic terms they'd
| prefer like "pro-women" over the more accurate "trans-
| exclusionary" or "anti-trans" to refer to their politics,
| but when a position gets converted into a four letter
| noun to shout at people it's definitely intended to
| offend. There are variants of the neutral/positive
| descriptor "trans" which are unambiguously insults too.
| [deleted]
| stewx wrote:
| The irony of the "TERF" abbreviation (Trans-Exclusionary
| Radical Feminist) is that many (most?) of the people being
| labelled as such are not radical feminists to begin with.
| RajT88 wrote:
| There's a bit of a chicken-and-egg going on there.
|
| If you're a feminist, but trans-exclusionary, you qualify for
| the "radical" part.
| Chris2048 wrote:
| > you qualify for the "radical" part.
|
| why? Do feminists already "exclude" cis-men?
| RajT88 wrote:
| The more extreme ones do, yes.
|
| "Men can't be feminists" is a hotly debated talking point
| in the feminist community.
| joshuamorton wrote:
| This seems self-contradictory. It's not really debated at
| all except on the extreme fringe. Hard to call that
| "hotly".
| willcipriano wrote:
| I'd argue that is traditional feminism. The feminists of
| the 60's and 70's wouldn't be on board for biological men
| in women's sports or spaces.
| DoctorOW wrote:
| I disagree. If you look at someone who could have a
| female face, female voice, female genitals, hormone
| levels marked by medical professionals, had massive
| changes in muscle/fat distribution. This person will be
| seen to most passersby as a woman, they will face the
| same systemic disadvantages feminists will have been
| arguing against for hundreds of years. To argue that
| oppressive institutions for women should not be removed
| but rather amended to oppressive for a subset of women is
| not in any way feminist.
| carbadtraingood wrote:
| What's a biological man? Not a Y chromosome, since they
| used to test Olympic athletes but found that the presence
| of a Y chromosome was not sufficient to identify men and
| women. (There are multiple genetic conditions that can
| cause this.) Many athletes had an unpleasant surprise at
| the hands of the IOC resulting in at least one suicide.
|
| History and relevant link: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik
| i/Sex_verification_in_sports#:....
| baremetal wrote:
| >What's a biological man? Not a Y chromosome, since they
| used to test Olympic athletes but found that the presence
| of a Y chromosome was not sufficient to identify men and
| women. (There are multiple genetic conditions that can
| cause this.) Many athletes had an unpleasant surprise at
| the hands of the IOC resulting in at least one suicide.
|
| that is a non-sequitur. the conclusion doesnt follow from
| the premises.
| carbadtraingood wrote:
| What conclusion? I just pointed out one historical
| attempt to define "biological man", and noted that it
| ended in failure?
| baremetal wrote:
| RajT88 wrote:
| Indeed, the TERFiest feminists out there are observed to
| often be first wave feminists.
| regularfry wrote:
| I'm not certain the Suffragettes and their peers put
| their feelings about trans women on record, but with that
| generation being entirely dead now I'm not sure they're
| relevant.
| wikfwikf wrote:
| Actually the feminists of the 60's and 70's debated this
| kind of issue at length and there was a diversity of
| opinion.
| fastball wrote:
| How are you defining "radical" and why would you preclude
| that term being used on the average so-labelled "TERF"?
| DanBC wrote:
| If you don't know what "radical feminist" means, and that
| it does not mean "a feminist that is radical", this
| discussion is going to be hard fucking work.
| robonerd wrote:
| I think the point above is that many of the women who get
| called TERF are scarcely feminists at all, let alone
| feminists who believe in a radical reordering of society.
| Many people accused of being TERFs are actually
| conservative women who believe in traditional sex roles
| and don't believe that gender is independent of
| biological sex. It's an insult levied against _all_
| transphobic women.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| Except it's not an insult, unless it's levied at someone
| who is not, in fact, trans exclusionary (say, if calling
| a trans woman who thinks sharing your pronouns is a bit
| too much a TERF).
|
| I suppose it's also possible that some people who are
| trans exclusionary would take offense at being called
| (radical) feminists...
|
| But calling someone who is anti abortion "pro life" or
| even "anti choice" is not an insult, even if I find their
| position misguided and monstrous.
| ta8903 wrote:
| That isn't specific to TERF, people just like to throw around
| insults like that and use them as a basis of their argument
| these days. You just notice it in this case because it's an
| acronym that defines itself. It's like incel or nazi/fascist,
| most people being called those things aren't actually
| celibate or nazis.
| connicpu wrote:
| Ironically the term was coined by TERFs, and many of them began
| to dislike the term after they realized others were using it
| derogatorily
| fknorangesite wrote:
| > Ironically the term was coined by TERFs
|
| Wikipedia says otherwise, for what it's worth:
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TERF#Coinage_and_usage
| Chris2048 wrote:
| Was it? Here's a Guardian article author claiming to have
| coined it:
| https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/nov/29/im-
| cre...
| zimpenfish wrote:
| > Here's a Guardian article author claiming to have coined
| it:
|
| Specifically does not claim to have coined it, no?: "I have
| retrospectively been credited as the coiner of the acronym
| "Terf" (Trans Exclusionary Radical Feminists). I suspect
| I'm merely the first person who wrote it on a website that
| still exists."
| Veen wrote:
| That often occurs. SJW and woke originated on the left before
| being co-opted by their opponents as insults. Naturally, many
| on the left now dislike those terms.
| tsimionescu wrote:
| They are disliked because they are cliche, but I haven't
| heard anyone on the notoriously censourious woke left
| calling them slurs, the way TERFs are trying to describe
| the quite neutral term.
| regularfry wrote:
| They're disliked because they've been overused to the
| point of losing any practical meaning, and it's
| transparent that they're only used for point-scoring and
| intra-tribal signalling. There's just nothing there to
| get that annoyed about, really.
|
| What I think the difference shows is that there is a
| fundamental part of the hierarchical/authoritarian
| mindset that objects to being labeled by someone in the
| out-group no matter the label, and that objecting to that
| labeling is itself an in-group marker.
| kurupt213 wrote:
| Do they still sell dictionary updates? I bought my OED just
| before leaving for University. The single volume with a bunch of
| shrunken pages from the multi volume set on each page. I just
| found my hemispherical magnifying glass last week. I thought I
| had lost it in a move.
|
| But my dictionary is at least 25 years out of date
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Whilst this is an interesting article, I wouldn't say it's
| particularly HN
| matheweis wrote:
| I'll explain my downvote; the tech community has been affected
| by challenges similar to those discussed in the article.
|
| Words that were considered standards for decades are within the
| last few years no longer acceptable.
|
| The changing definitions (or at least acceptability) of words,
| have, among other things, resulted in expensive refactors of
| code and documentation, and at times even bugs.
|
| As a particular examples, consider Whitelist/Blacklist being
| changed to Denylist/Allowlist, or Master/Slave to
| Primary/Secondary.
| SilverBirch wrote:
| Yeah I think we can reasonably disagree, that was just my
| take. I think this article suffers from the same thing a lot
| of articles suffer from which is a quotable topic in the
| first 5 paragraphs that doesn't really od justice to the
| article. The broad question that others argue is definitely
| worth debate (Some of which might belong here), but this
| article is more of an ode to the OED, and to the underlying
| methodology of the OED.
|
| If you look at the other main conversation here, it is far
| more literal than methodological about these topics -
| literally is X thing Y. Sure, you can have that argument, but
| (a) it's not a conversation this article really invites and
| (b) even if it were, it's not a topic we're really eqiuped
| for.
|
| Maybe I'm just pointing out we suffer from a failure to find
| a more generic news source.
| thrown_22 wrote:
| carbadtraingood wrote:
| These changes make sense even outside of any sort of
| political charge.
|
| "Allow list" is frankly a much more descriptive and easy to
| understand term than "white list". It's a list of things that
| are allowed. If you were trying to learn the English
| language, I'd imagine a self describing term is much easier
| to understand.
| [deleted]
| robonerd wrote:
| > _" Allow list" is frankly a much more descriptive and
| easy to understand term than "white list"._
|
| Only if you're pretending we were all learned English
| yesterday. "White list" is an older more established term,
| and that familiarity makes it easier to understand. Self-
| describing terms don't aid communication if they're
| replacing old terms that everybody already understood
| anyway.
|
| An example, "submarine" and "undersea boat". The latter is
| self-describing, while the former is vague. A submarine..
| what? 'Submarine' alone seems to be an adjective that means
| 'under the ocean'. But what is under the ocean? A submarine
| cable? A submarine crab? "Undersea boat" is self-
| describing; what is underwater? A boat.
|
| So is "undersea boat" a better term? It self-describes well
| enough that English speakers with no knowledge of German
| should be able to figure out what it means easily. But does
| that mean it's actually a better term? No, in the context
| of English it isn't a better term, because everybody
| already knows what a 'submarine' is so this term's failure
| to self-describe is irrelevant. Already knowing what a word
| means is always easier than being able to puzzle out what a
| word means by seeing that it describes itself.
|
| Most words don't self-describe anyway, and even when they
| do, the words they self-describe with aren't self-
| describing themselves. What is a 'list' anyway? That
| doesn't self-describe. Should we replace it with "ordered-
| collection-of-things"? None of those words self-describe
| either! The adoption of this word isn't _really_ about
| self-description, self-describing words just isn 't
| something we [english speakers] prioritize. It's political
| activism based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis.
| notahacker wrote:
| Is opposing it political activism based on the Sapir-
| Whorf hypothesis? Yes.
|
| But then, political activism is about the only reason
| _against_ replacing "whitelist", which unlike
| "submarine" is neither a technical term, nor common
| parlance, with the more explicit "allowlist". It's an
| obscure, relatively modern coinage as an antonym to the
| word "blacklist" which for most of its existence referred
| almost exclusively to people and was considered a
| judgement on their character. I've had to explain to
| _native_ English speakers what a "whitelist" is intended
| to do before, never mind the majority of people using
| internet services who don't speak English as a first
| language. I suspect they'd have got "allowlist"...
|
| I suspect that in a world where there actually was an
| issue with people getting upset by casual use of the word
| "submarine" we probably wouldn't have that much issue
| getting our heads around "undersea boat" (and that's
| despite "submarine" being a more universal word and the
| English language concept of a "boat" being pretty
| strongly wedded to the idea of small, probably open-
| topped vessels which sit on top of the water). Of course
| blacklist/whitelist has no etymological connection with
| race, but it also has no etymological connection or near-
| universally understood association with infosec or user
| preferences
| regularfry wrote:
| > Only if you're pretending we were all learned English
| yesterday.
|
| "White" here is metaphorical. "Allow" is literal. That
| makes "allow" the easier-to-understand term for those who
| are learning. Because, yes, English is something that
| needs to be learned. Not "everybody" already understands
| everything, unless your definition of "everybody"
| discounts a whole lot of humans for some reason.
|
| > "White list" is an older more established term, and
| that familiarity makes it easier to understand.
|
| Only if you already understand it, which is entirely
| self-referential.
|
| > self-describing words just isn't something we [english
| speakers] prioritize
|
| I'm going to assume here you mean the difference between
| metaphors and literals, because otherwise nothing makes
| sense. And it depends on the audience. If it's technical
| docs, I sure hope whoever's writing them takes a suitably
| informed view as to the comprehension level of their
| readers, because _that 's the damn job_.
|
| > political activism
|
| "We should not make things easier for non-native speakers
| who don't already have all the implied context of the
| English language down pat" sounds a _lot_ like a
| political position to me.
| robonerd wrote:
| The term "allowlist" isn't motivated by some apolitical
| desire for literal self-describing terminology. It's
| political activism; you want to effect change in society
| by changing language. I know it, you know it, everybody
| knows it. Pretending otherwise is tantamount to
| gaslighting.
|
| Nobody is agitating for 'string' to be replaced with
| 'character sequence'. It would be more descriptive, more
| literal, easier to understand than 'string' which usually
| means something completely different and not obviously
| related to character sequences at all. But nobody
| submitting passive aggressive drive-by PRs to public
| repos demanding that the word 'string' be stricken
| because isn't literal or self describing. Because nobody
| really cares about words being literal and self
| describing, that's a transparent post-hoc justification
| for what is fundamentally political activism.
| carbadtraingood wrote:
| Ok, I'll try again with a less cynical and more engaged
| response.
|
| > Nobody cares about words being literal and self
| describing
|
| I care about literal and self describing language, and I
| believe you are falling prey to the fundamental
| attribution error -- you believe there is a group of
| folks driving some agenda.
|
| I look at the suggestion no matter where it comes from
| and say, "oh hey, yeah, I think that is a good
| suggestion".
|
| It's not some grand conspiracy to "post hoc justify
| political activism". Someone just suggested a thing and
| many of us said, "oh yeah, that makes sense and is easy
| to change."
| carbadtraingood wrote:
| regularfry wrote:
| "String" is hideously ambiguous and yes, people do want
| to change it. Does it mean a null-terminated array of
| bytes? How about length-prefixed? Does it mean a list of
| code points with some arbitrary storage format the API
| shields you from? Some combination? If you haven't seen
| these conversations and want to ascribe some dark
| motivation you don't agree with to improving the basic
| operating conditions we're all working in that's not on
| me.
| dchftcs wrote:
| >These changes make sense even outside of any sort of
| political charge.
|
| They only make sense if you disregard any costs associated
| with the change. In addition to logistical costs, it's
| culturally costly to make many people change, and even more
| costly that people who fail to adapt are demonized.
| Generations of text was written to use blacklist/whitelist,
| and people who read them would naturally be more
| comfortable with those usage, and you're asking them to
| bend over.
|
| >If you were trying to learn the English language, I'd
| imagine a self describing term is much easier to
| understand.
|
| The controversies of blacklist/whitelist are very America-
| centric and your argument is exemplary of that. Terms like
| blacklist/white list have already permeated many languages
| by this time. People who have seen blacklist/whitelist in
| their own language would have no problem adapting to the
| English version of it.
| carbadtraingood wrote:
| Can you help me understand the costs? Because as far as I
| can tell it is:
|
| 1) "We should consider using Allowlist" "ok, but let's be
| careful with externally facing APIs, in exactly the same
| way we change all our externally facing APIs?" "Sure!"
|
| 2) "I was editing this file, find/replaced a couple cases
| of whitelist while I was in there" "LGTM"
|
| 3) "Oh, hey, noticed we had nearly finished
| opportunistically replacing whitelist. Does anyone mind
| if I just finish up?" "Sure, timebox it?"
|
| Like, it's extremely low cost? What costs are you
| imagining?
| fastball wrote:
| Don't forget Master -> Main for git.
| leeoniya wrote:
| i wonder if the recording industry also knee-jerk-renamed
| "master record" and "mastering", since the meaning is the
| same in both contexts.
|
| or if "masterclass" and "karate master" will have the same
| fate.
|
| :eyeroll:
|
| whitelist/blacklist has an unfortunate recent history, but
| black/white dualism preceeds it by a good margin:
|
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black-and-white_dualism
| GuB-42 wrote:
| I actually think the move away from master/slave
| terminology is a good thing, not because of the association
| with human slavery, but because the term "master" is a bit
| too broad.
|
| For example, in a database, the master is usually the
| running copy while the slave is the backup. First, it
| doesn't match the idea of a master and a slave, normally,
| the master commands and the slave works, a (human) slave
| doesn't sit idle and take the role of the master when he is
| not available. This is a backup, not a slave.
|
| In the context of process execution, the parallel with
| slavery is more clear. The master process controls the
| slave processes completely while they do the work.
| Interestingly, these are often called "workers" even though
| it is the closest thing we have to slaves in computing.
|
| In the context of a bus, the master can either simply be
| the #1 device, while the slave is #2, no real hierarchy
| here. In other cases the master is the controller and
| decides which device (sometimes called a slave) talks and
| which one listens. There is a clear hierarchical
| relationship but it is a bit different from the
| master/worker relationship of processes.
|
| And now the "master" branch in git, which is actually more
| like a trunk (SVN term) or default (Mercurial term).
|
| Rethinking the "master" term forces people to think of more
| precise terms, in most cases, "master" is just lazy.
| iamdamian wrote:
| Isn't the "master branch" in git analogous to the "master
| copy" in other industries? I don't know that I've ever
| seen a reference to a "slave" branch in git.
|
| If that's the case, should we really be limping it into
| the current master/slave renaming zeitgeist? If so, then
| should we not talk of mastery at all, and why? It seems
| to be a fairly precise and useful term.
| regularfry wrote:
| No, the etymology is master/slave. It was inherited from
| Bitkeeper, which had master repositories and slave
| repositories.
| googlryas wrote:
| Ironically, git itself is a derogatory, ableist word, but I
| suppose that is too central to let it be rebranded.
| [deleted]
| baremetal wrote:
| hombre_fatal wrote:
| I don't think we need a self-appointed referee when we have an
| upvote system.
| Veen wrote:
| The upvote system is just hundreds of self-appointed
| referees.
| leejoramo wrote:
| I see the OED was a database of the English vocabulary with a
| full version control history each word.
|
| I remember early in the CD-ROM era, I rennet having access to
| the MS-DOS version of the OED. I have often thought about
| trying to track down a copy and install on my current system
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