Confession: I am a nerd. Want proof? Here ya go:

One of my life-goals is to own a printed copy of the Oxford English Dictionary. The OED is currently at 20 volumes with a price tag of $995. It's amazing. It's ridiculous. I want one.

This desire began sometime during college. I learned that Webster, though perhaps the standard American dictionary, was not by any means the best English dictionary. That title belonged to the OED. In fact, the OED's website is subtitled "The definitive record of the English language." The OED not only has definitions of a word, but the history of each word, as well as historical quotes to back the information.

When I lived in England, there was a TV show based on the OED. I'm serious. It was called Balderdash and Piffle and was used to gain new research on some words and to add some new words to the dictionary. This woman would pick a word and go explore the history and meaning of the word, including travelling, interviewing people, etc. I watched two episodes of Balderdash and Piffle and can easily say that it was one of my favorite shows on the few channels we got. It's okay, I know I'm a nerd.

As much as I would love one, I can quickly think of a few reasons not to get my own copy of the OED.

First, it's $995. And there are children in the world who've never even seen a book, much less know how to read one. $995 could probably do something about that.

Second, language is constantly changing. Language isn't set, like math (which is wonderful), so the rules, and the words themselves will evolve with time. This means that dictionaries also have to evolve. The OED is currently only in its second edition (Merriam-Webster is in its eleventh), but I know that the moment I purchase mine, they'll begin work on the third edition.

Third, they have an online version. Well, scratch that. I just learned an online subscription is $295/year. Crazy. In only 3.3 years of payments like that, you could have your own, physical, book-scented copy.

Moving on...

Fourth, twenty volumes is a lot of bookshelf space.

Fifth, how often will I actually research a word's history? Hard to say.

So you see, I will probably never own my own copy. However, I still think it would be awesome to have one.