Re: Merriam-Webster's Unabridged vs Oxford English Dictionary

Peter T. Daniels wrote:
Why they cannot be compared? They both contain meaning
of a word, pronunciation, etymology and examples of
usage. I can't see any principal difference between them.

Well, you could start by looking up "principal" in both
of them.

Then, you could open them up and look at any page, and if
you still claim not to see the difference, then you have
no business trying to use an unabridged dictionary.

I order to do what you suggest I should own both of them.
The purpose of my original post was to figure out which one
of them is preferable to own. I can't lookup "principal", so
I searched for "terrestrial". OED introductory tour uses
this word as example of OED entries. Here are results:

OED:
http://www.oed.com/tour/step-5.html
http://www.oed.com/tour/step-6.html

M-W Online:
http://www.m-w.com/dictionary/terrestrial

Putting all the sarcasm aside, could you elaborate about the
differences?

[...], are you familiar with the
IPA? (Not that the proprietary system they used in the
original edition was any better than the American
pronunciation style, which predates both IPA and OED
style.)

Quick web search reveals that it stands for "International
Phonetic Association". Many of the characters from phonetic
alphabet are known to me because I learned them in school. I
feel comfortable with this notation for pronunciation.

I don't have any specific purpose in mind. I want to have
comprehensive dictionary of modern English (preferably in
digital form) to do words lookup occasionally.

In that case, if you're American, get the 11th Collegiate
(comes with a CD-ROM, a time-waster if ever their was one
-- I gave mine to a blind friend) or, if you have any
interest in etymology and Indo-European, American
Heritage; if you're English, get something comparable
published by Oxford, Chambers, or Collins (they seem to
be the standards); or, if you're from the Southeastern
Hemidemisphere, get something from Macquarie. (Or the
ODE, which John Atkinson tells us is Oxford's Australian
dictionary.)

What should I get if English is my second language and I
have a passion for knowing it well?


.

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