This makes me feel like crying

This from The Telegraph online newspaper:

Another Edition of the Oxford English Dictionary unlikely to be printed

"Sales of the third edition of the vast tome have fallen due to the increasing popularity of online alternatives, according to its publisher.

A team of 80 lexicographers has been working on the third edition of the OED – known as OED3 – for the past 21 years.

The dictionary’s owner, Oxford University Press (OUP), said the impact of the internet means OED3 will probably appear only in electronic form.

The most recent OED has existed online for more than a decade, where it receives two million hits a month from subscribers who pay an annual fee of £240.

“The print dictionary market is just disappearing, it is falling away by tens of per cent a year,” Nigel Portwood, the chief executive of OUP, told the Sunday Times. Asked if he thought the third edition would be printed, he said: “I don’t think so.”

Almost one third of a million entries were contained in the second version of the OED, published in 1989 across 20 volumes.

The next full edition is still estimated to be more than a decade away from completion; only 28 per cent has been finished to date.

OUP said it would continue to print the more familiar Oxford Dictionary of English, the single-volume version sold in bookshops and which contains more contemporary entries such as vuvuzela, the plastic trumpet encountered in the 2010 football World Cup.

Mr Portwood said printed dictionaries had a shelf life of about another 30 years, with the pace of change increased by the popularity of e-books and devices such as the Apple iPad and Amazon’s Kindle.

Simon Winchester, author of ‘The Meaning of Everything: The Story of the Oxford English Dictionary’, said the switch towards online formats was “prescient”.

He said: “Until six months ago I was clinging to the idea that printed books would likely last for ever. Since the arrival of the iPad I am now wholly convinced otherwise.

“The printed book is about to vanish at extraordinary speed. I have two complete OEDs, but never consult them – I use the online OED five or six times daily. The same with many of my reference books – and soon with most.

“Books are about to vanish; reading is about to expand as a pastime; these are inescapable realities.”

The first dictionary in recognisable format was Samuel Johnson’s, which was published in 1755. It remained the standard text for 150 years until the OUP embarked on its project in 1879.

The first OED came out in sections from 1884, completed in 1928.

Despite its worldwide reputation, the OED has never made a profit. The continuing research costs several million pounds a year. “These are the sort of long-term research projects which will never cover their costs, but are something that we choose to do,” Mr Portwood said.

A spokesman for the OUP said a print version of OED3 could not be ruled out “if there is sufficient demand at the time” but that its completion was “likely to be more than a decade” away."

Citation: Jamieson, Alistair. The Telegraph. "Oxford English Dictionary 'Will Not Be Printed Again'. 16 March, 2011. <http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/booknews/7970391/Oxford-English-Dictionary-will-not-be-printed-again.html> Accessed 16 March 2011.

My dictionary problems

So, I'm thinking of a word.  But I don't if it exists.  And I'm not sure how to look for it in the dictionary.  Since I don't know if it exists, neither do I know how it is spelled.  Since I don't know how it is spelled, I wouldn't know if I was on the right page of the dictionary to look for the word.

So I will try and explain the meaning of the potential word:

When I run across a new and interesting word in conversation or reading, I have this internal compulsion to look the word up in a dictionary. (I don't know exactly why this is.  My dad telling me, "Look it up yourself" so many times, rather than telling me what a word meant or how to spell it, perhaps.?)

My wife recently gave me as a gift the two-volume Shorter Oxford English Dictionary, in a (possibly futile) effort to keep me from buying the complete Oxford English Dictionary which is a 20-volume set, and costs around $850, and for which I have taken out a $1000 life insurance policy on Gracie, so that, in case she dies, I can immediately purchase this wonderful reference.  (I'm not making that up.)  I know that taking out a life insurance policy on my wife in order to buy a dictionary might label me as...eccentric.  And I'm okay with that.  But who else has a wife who puts her foot down and says that she will not co-habitate with a 20-volume dictionary?  What was I supposed to do?

Anyway, I guess you might be getting a clue by now that I really, really like words.

Which brings me back to my quandary about this word that I don't know how to find.

So there I was, reading to Gracie this morning from Bread and Wine and William Willemon makes the following statement, "Jesus seeks even more radical metanoia."

[...Metanoia?..] I think to myself.  [Metanoia?  Meta...maybe 'over'? maybe...Noia...hmmm...para-noia...what could ...'-noia' mean?]  I am staring at the word, trying to break it down in my head, incapable of continuing to read with this nagging ignorance eating away at me.

I jump up, and stride toward my desk...

Gracie laughs.  "I knew you were going to do that...I should have been counting the seconds to see how long it took you to get up."

So there I am flipping through Volume 1 of the Shorter OED.  J....K...L...M...Ma...Me...Met...Metan...

I am looking at the top of the page at the "bracketing words".  The words at the top of the page that tell what the first and last word on each page is until...at last, and deeply satisfying it is..."metamer/metaphysis". I've found it!  The right page in the dictionary. The page with the definition that I need to ease my ignorance.

So I found the meaning of the word "metanoia" (go look it up for yourself), but I also found a definition that I don't know a word for...what is the word for the satisfying realization that you have finally found your "place" that you are searching for in a book.  For realizing that, while your eyes have not yet found the word you are looking for, you know that word is on the page your fingers have flipped to?

I don't know?  Dictopagination?  Logobracketing?

I guess the OED staff needs to come up with a 400-volume set, which, instead of starting with the word and then giving you the definition, starts with all of the possible definitions and then gives you the word.  Kind of an Oxford English Dictionary - Jeopardy Edition.

If they do that, then I'll need to take out another life insurance policy on Gracie, but this time I will need to include enough to put a Dictionary Addition onto our house. Sweet.